True raccoon story, wif picshurz.

"My friend (and fellow animal lover) owns a business here in Winter Park. Because of it's location, people have abandoned a lot of cats and kittens near the dumpsters in hopes that they will be ok on their own. My buddy decided a long time ago to try to help these ferral(sp?) cats by caring for them and helping them get adopted.

He spends about $50.00 a week feeding them, getting them spayed and neutered, vaccinated, etc... things have been working out pretty well, but apparently word has gotten around about his hospitality because all of the sudden (overnight) his food costs doubled and then tripled. He started feeding the cats during the day to see what was going on and he quickly learned that he was feeding more than cats. He was feeding raccoons who had muscled their way in to the "soup kitchen."

The raccoons have steadily moved into the territory and have "prospered" to say the least. What started out as 3 or 4 cats turned into 10 cats and 34 raccoons!!!

For the past couple of weekends, I've been helping my friend relocate some "city raccoons" to the country because they've been getting a little out of hand.

As evidenced by the disgruntled cat on the left, these raccoons have overstayed their welcome.


In an effort to keep the coons from eating all of the catfood, my friend throws a pound or two of dry dogfood over the fence. The raccoons proceed to wash the dog food in the drainage ditch before eating. (You know, 'cause dry dog food is gross!)



After about an hour of patienly watching the raccoons outsmart us (and our traps) by rolling the cages or reaching through the sides to steal the food, we succeed in capturing four of the little guys. They are incredibly smart, industrious, persistent, and experessive creatures. Next time I'll take some video... when you talk to them in their traps, they look you in the eye. When you walk around the trap, they watch you. If you listen VERY closely, you can hear the little gears turning in their heads.



We have arrived at our undisclosed destination (rumored to be next door to one of Dick Cheney's favorite undisclosed locations where it's somehow legal to shoot your friends in the face with a shotgun).

There are no photos of the little guys running off into the distance because:
A. I was solo today and it takes two hands to open the cages
B. The youngest of this bunch had never seen this much excitement before and it made him very unpredictable. (dangerous)
C. These guys run so fast that if I took a picture, all you would see is a gray/black streak and a dust cloud."

True story!