Hello and I hope you are recovering well and your furry kids are ok too. I am the woman who posted the "What is this creature digging up our yard" a little while back. I live on 63rd and 9th. We have an enormous problem here with raccoons. For the last year the family of 3 raccoons has increased by about 3 more. They are not at all timid or frightened off by being sprayed in the faces with a garden hose. I was gardening late this early fall around 11pm when three of them came over the fence in a row, they were between me and the safety of my door. I backed up, yelled, clapped my hands, etc. and they continued forward, I turned the hose on them and they paused and came right over the fence which freaked me out. I screamed for my sleeping husband. I have 3 chihuahuas that I was terrified would come out of the open door and be slaughtered. In all the chaos, they took off, but it was one long moment that hung in the air. My neighbor and I have newly painted white picket fences. We can clearly see the huge paw prints from the raccoon's nightly route that goes through our yards. I am not talking about a few prints, I am talking about 30 or more. These are really big paws. This summer at 10am the coons could be seen walking around in my neighbor's yard and they regularly sit in the back yard tree. We know when to look because the crows and birds begin quite a racket of noise in protest of their presence. The neighbors have a very small child and I have a 4th grader, and we are concerned about the danger posed by the raccoons wandering in the yard during afternoon hours. I cannot let my dogs go into the back yard if it is dark. Even during the day I worry because they are always around. One issue that keeps them around might be our nearby neighbor who leaves a big pile of peanuts on her porch for the squirrels to eat, of course every other hungry creature from pigeons to crows to rats may be interested. But I don't know if raccoons have an interest in peanuts. I made a call a long time ago but was told that the city was not going to do anything. About the "creature", we haven't seen it for a while, but I fell through a pretty large hole under the surface of my backyard, so maybe it is going into hibernation. I never did figure out what it was for certain. I have purchased some repellent from Lowe's that you spray in/on things you want animals to leave alone. It's pretty expensive, smells like a corpse, contains peppers and animal blood of some sort. It is not having any results aside from entertaining the dogs. The raccoons around here are not cute or cuddly, they are aggressive and unafraid of people. They are dangerous. Last night another neighbor to the other side had her yard bags shredded by the varmits. They turn over all the pots and tear up all sorts of things in my yard. But it is the potential for attack that I really care about. I would rather not wait for a terrible thing to happen as it did for the poor woman above.
