A friend in Denver was being driven to distraction by the destruction in her garden. Pots were overturned and scattered, transplants dug up and tossed aside with alarming regularity. She put the plants back into the ground, and they would pop out again within days or sometimes hours of rescue.
It wasn’t until she installed surveillance cameras that the culprits were exposed. A family of raccoons had moved into the neighborhood. My friend had been fertilizing her potted plants and transplants with fish emulsion. The raccoons were determined to find those dead fish, no matter how well buried.
I have my own trials and tribulations with raccoons. They start eyeing my concord grapes the minute fruit forms. Even so, suburban raccoons are picky eaters. Until the grapes ripen they throw a few test clusters on the ground every once in awhile in apparent disgust. After the grapes turn purple, nightly feeding frenzies ensue.
A jam-making neighbor moved away, so I no longer pick these grapes. I would be happy to share the bounty with these masked marauders, if it weren’t for their toddler-style eating habits. Like their human counterparts, raccoons refuse to eat the seeds or the skins. They suck out the juice and the flesh and spit out the residue. Every morning for a month in late August and into September, I wake to a patio littered with hundreds of grape carcasses.
Overindulging in fruit appears to have a laxative effect on raccoons, whose toilet habits are as unrefined as their eating practices. They leave piles on top of the shade cloth that covers the arbor. This rains down at inopportune times, such as during dinner parties, giving new meaning to the phrase “reign of terror.”
If the droppings fall during the night, my dog is happy to clean them up when she goes out for her morning constitutional. Raccoons carry a whole host of nasty pathogens. A sick dog inevitably means she’s found a cache, which has led to at least one visit to the vet for a course of antibiotics.
Raccoons also routinely dredge the pond for goldfish, snails and tadpoles. Thankfully, they aren’t very efficient at catching fish, but they do a lot of damage to the plants during these nocturnal swims, overturning pots and smashing foliage.
I awoke in the middle of the night recently as one of my cats threw himself at the screen, hollering like a banshee. Sure enough, three raccoon youngsters had climbed the juniper outside the window. All three had their noses pressed against the screen with expressions on their faces that clearly said “What!” Only when I shined a flashlight out the window did they decide to retreat.
I do admit to having mixed feelings about these destructive garden guests. Undeniably cute, one of my favorite sightings was as I turned into our driveway one night and saw in the headlights, five little raccoon faces peering out of the storm drain. If only they would eat slugs.
Marcia Tatroe is a garden writer and lecturer. E-mail her at rltaurora@aol.com.
