Taking the raccoons for a ride
Rocky and Rockette ready to meet their new home.
Our house sits between two creeks, and we often have little visitors. I’ve seen racoons, skunks, opossums and coyotes along with the lesser pests like turkeys, hawks, squirrels, deer, gophers and feral cats. It’s like living in a zoo sometimes.
Most of these don’t bother us, but sometimes the racoons decide to dig up the lawn looking for white grubs. Then we have to take action, and I get the humane trap out of the garage, bait it with cat food and wait.
Sometimes, I catch a skunk. Then I have to sneak up on the cage and throw a big towel over it so the critter can’t spray me. I open the far door of the trap, the skunk goes one way and I go the other. So far, I haven’t had to take a tomato juice bath.
When we get raccoons, they go for a ride. I think I could legally kill them, but I don’t want to do that. The county would come get them, but then they would do the killing, and I don’t want that either.
So I pick up the trap, put it in the car and head over the bridge to the oil refinery in Benicia, where I let them go. They don’t have the $3 for the bridge toll, so they can’t come back. So far 14 or 15 of the little perishers have been relocated, counting the two we got Friday night.
This is the first time I’ve managed to get two in the trap at once. They were small; I think they were littermates just ready to strike out on their own. Marvelously cute in the cage, destructive as a tornado on the lawn.
Now they are living in the wilds of Benicia, meeting up with the rest of their family I’ve taken over there. There isn’t much damage they can do to a refinery, and I hope they live a long and happy life, just not here.
Totally Unauthorized 
Great photo. Great post.