How can I discourage this unwanted visitor?

OH man is it ever Great to see you back!!!I'm not sure what to do about your Raccoon. Maybe Grandpa Bob will take him. Read his post when you have a minute. Between Minnie and her dad they have adopted a raccoon. I sure wouldn't feed him. If it were me I wouldn't want him there at all either so I would go to the animal shelter and get a cage and cage him then the animal shelter could put him out in the wild or whatever they do???

I definitely understand your problem...my sister was bitten by a raccoon when she was a kid and had to go though the rabies shot process. not fun. best thing you can do is try to get a few cutesy pics if you can before you shoo it away. i would call animal control to deal with it. they will know how to deal with him best. but it seems that this one i pretty tame comparatively to what it could be, from what i understanding from your post. it came looking for food, not a battle. of course how you deal with it is up to you.

Hi Crazy Nurse!! Funny you should mention your vistitor. We also have a raccoon who comes each evening around 8 PM. I put leftovers out at the back of our yard for him. We have a deep yard, so I'd say his 'food bowl' is about 30 or more feet from our back porch. We saw him on his tippy toes trying to get a drink from the bird bath. So I bought a big dish pan, hubby dug a hole big enough for the pan to set down in the ground and we fill it with water for him. That also helps keep him from coming closer to the house. It's really neat to see him drink from it. We also have the hugest groundhog you ever did see who drinks from it in the day. I've even seen the birds getting a sip or two. Our back yard is a certified Wildlife Habitat, so we welcome the critters, but try to manage where they can go and do. We've even outsmarted the squirrels! You know what they say, "If you can't beat em, join em." Get creative!!

I think under the circumstances you would need to call WildLIfe and Game or whatever name they go 'by in your location and have them come and move Mr. Raccoon to a different location instead. no harm to the raccoon or to you and no more problems.

It will smell bad for both of you but I've found that ammonia tends to keep animals away. Maybe if you put ammonia on your back steps for a while until it got used to not coming around anymore it would go away. On the down side ammonia doesn't just stink to animals! It's worth a shot.

I would contact Wild Life, best keep it away from you. Otherwise it'll be tearing up your trash bags, etc. Better to just have him sent back to his enviornment.

CrazyN, I would call wild life control, they will trap him and set him out to better hopefully non human inhabited woods....This is the problem when people befriend wild life.. They become dependent and unafraid. As cute as he maybe he is still wild and you are very right about the rabies threat.

talk about encouraging him to come around! what my father in law did (they live in the suburbs and had this family of racoons that used to come and visit) was he got a big cage from the spca (see if they will lend you one) and trapped the family and moved them to a more suitable location.

Do you eat raccoons? Well if you do you can feats on your problem, their fur can keep you warm during winter, infact encourage them, breed them and you can start a whole designing label, and a small can food factory. If you do not eat them, well you can call the animal control.

Thats gona be a problem!the raccoon is used to be feed so this will take a wile for him to figure out the previous owner has left.Just make sure not to feed him not even once or he wont leave. I had one coming the place I used to live in the mountains,but he keept finding a way to get the trash till I had enugh and shot him with a bbgung.Wich dident work and I`m happy about it (later on I seen her babys :O )But the raccoon accualy stopt going for the trash mabay because she got scared instaed waitet for me to give her something :))))) good luck.

If the raccoon only wants food, then you can discourage it by not giving it any food. Make sure that you don't leave anything edible lying around as well, so tie the garbage bags tightly and keep a lid on the can at all times. If you don't have problems with animal rights, then you can also scare away the raccoon by threatening it with a stick or something every time you see it. I do that to the stray cats that wander over my house. Now, they're all afraid of me and run away when they see me. But they come back at night or when I'm not around so it doesn't really work.

Lol !! this is a very cute unwanted guest that you having, i initially thought that could be some sort of sales person who insists on selling you something. Anyway, I think to teach them a lesson not to get to your house compound (eg. shouting at them, beating them hartly) would be quite a decent method to discourage them.

I have had the same problem. This sounds disgusting but it's the only method that seemed to work for me. You take an onion and cover it in urine and leave at the footstep D: Once the raccoon comes it will sniff the onion and will immediately flee. You won't be seein its face again. Hope I helped

Truly, I wouldn't mind having that raccoon around. It would only be bad if it was aggressive. I actually feed a raccoon and it's family when I'm walking around in the park 5 minutes away from my house. We feed it bread, marshmallows and other things of that sort. They're not that bad, but you shouldn't have any type of physical contact with it. It's a wild animal... you never know what's running through it's head. My best advice would be for you to spray it with water whenever it comes near. It might sound stupid and mean, but I'm sure that it will keep the animal away from your house. There was once a type of device being sold somewhere that sprayed water on whoever passed by. It had a laser that detected movement. Good Luck!

Ewwwwwww, I don't blame you one bit for not wanting that animal around! Yes, they can be very mean, even if they're not carrying rabies. Since they enticed it up there with food, I'm going to suggest something that's probably going to sound a bit strange. I use cayenne pepper in my birdseed to keep the raccoons out of my birdfeeder. It doesn't bother the birds, but the raccoons hate it! So, my suggestion is to put a piece of bread out there and heavily lace it with cayenne pepper. (Maybe put a little margarine on it first so that the pepper sticks on better) Once it has a taste of that it may decide that the food source there is not good anymore and avoid it like the plague. Basically, cayenne acts on them like it does on us humans...it's hot! I can't think of any other method outside of trapping it in a live trap and relocating/releasing it to a woods somewhere. I know that the cayenne in the birdseed works extremely well and they no longer come up by my house or my feeder. It might be worth a try?! So that's where you've been! I've been wondering where you were. I had no idea that you were moving and all. Good luck at your new home!

If there is not animal control - like there isn't around here. You can use a "live trap" trap it and take it somewhere else and let it out of the trap. I have no idea what a live trap costs because my husband made ours. But it does solve the problem and the animal is set free to live somewhere else. No harm done. Good luck.

poison it, you have yours and your family's life at risk