Since you've got these little masked bandits
around, just be sure that there's never anything
left outside that even resembles something edible.

Judging by the amount of tracks, and the mess around our trash can last night, I would say we had an entire family here. Cute but very messy little critters

Back in early summer, my wife woke me up and thought someone was trying to break in. There was a huge commotion on the deck outside our bedroom window. I looked out and saw some little eyes looking back from on top of the grill by the window. I banged on the window and made some noise but they didn't leave so I went out on the deck. THere were 4 baby raccoons climbing around on the grill having a great time. They weren't the least bit afraid, I had to get the broom and push them off the deck.

2 stories about racoons. 1st one- A lady I work with stopped on her way home one day at the discount bread store and loaded up on stuff. Parked her car in the garage with the windows down. Told the kids to get the breads out and they never did. Next am she found her car strewn with all this bread and empty wrappers and the likes. She was livid but had to get to work. She had gone about a mile or so when a big fat racoon crawled out from under the seat. What a hoot, scared her to death, almost wrecked in our wonderful Atlanta traffic. I guess he crawled in, got a belly full and feel asleep. Can you imagine the party he and his buddies had in all that bread, they had hit pay dirt.
2nd- as a nurse I went home with a patient to take care of her for a few days, she had no one to help her. At night a family of racoons would come on her deck and sit and look thru the back door with their little paws up on the door window like they were saying, let me in, its cold out here. They were darling and she actually fed them dog food.

I watched a racoon attack a friend of mine. This could have happened to any of his four children, or to me, or any of my children, or to either of our wives. What happened was one evening about an hour from dusk we were walking down the sidewalk in front of my friends home. We were both in our late thirty's when this occurred. My friend was pointing up to a roof joist that needed some attention on his house and we were both looking up. Out of the bushes came a large racoon and crawled right up my friends right leg. He tried to shake the snarling spitting pos off, only to be bit on the heel. Ripped his Nike high top tennis shoe to shreads and those heels are pretty tough. Turned out the coon was rabid and my friend went for shots, once a week, over something like 16 weeks. I could see from my friends medical condition that the shots were no picnic. The reason Im posting this is to warn some of the folks that despite the cute looks, these animals are wild. They are not dogs or cats or any other kind of pet. Stay away from them and do not feed them. In this case animal control officers would not do anything because they only handle stray dogs...or at least in our city its this way. If coons invade your space, kill them as fast as you can.