By John Toth
The Bulletin
A couple of months ago I noticed that the cat food I left out on my porch at night was gone, and often the food bowl and the bigger water bowl were pushed around.
Even if stray cats came around, they would not have done that. Something else was rearranging the porch furnishings.
I left the porch lights on at night to discourage critter visitations, but that just made it more frequent. Opossums and racoons could now see the food better and would come right up.
One raccoon even came to the back sliding door to see what we were doing. There was plenty of food in the bowl still. It was just curious. Then it finished the food and slowly moved on.
The light didn’t do the trick, so Amelia Obregon, one of our neighbors, and I teamed up to see what was going on. We decided to put traps out.
These traps don’t harm the animal. They contain food in the rear, and when the critter steps on a leever, the door behind it snaps closed. Then the critter has to wait until morning until we get up.
Amelia already had a trap, and I ordered one from Amazon for $42. I expected it to be more expensive, because when I talked to the Angleton Animal Control officers, I was told that the city only has three traps, and that they each cost about $300.
Maybe those are the super- heavy-duty commercial traps. We just wanted to trap raccoons and opossums.
I’m not critical of the city’s animal control personnel. They do a fantastic job with what they have, and I commend them for it. When they put out a call for pet food, and I see it, I send it their way. With the growth in the city, they have their hands full. That’s one reason Amelia and I decided to deal with this problem ourselves.
We set both traps in my backyard. We used cat food for bait, figuring that the critters were already accustomed to loading up on it every night. The only thing different they had to do now was to go inside the trap.
Over the course of two weeks, we wound up with nine opossums and two very agitated raccoons. That was a lot more than we expected. We thought we’d catch two or three.
We’ve always had opossum visitors in the backyard, which is not a bad thing. They help keep the yard healthy by eating fleas, ticks and mosquitoes. They also are not rabies carriers. Most people I know welcome them in their yards. But this was too many.
We figured that they came from the nearby woods being cleared for subdivisions. The wildlife lost their home and had to go somewhere, so they came to my house and probably all the other houses up and down the street.
We relocated the critters to a farm, where they could live happy lives as wild animals. But I was worried that they needed cat food to survive, since that has been a large portion of their diet.
“As soon as I released it,” Amelia said of one of the trapped opossums: “It ran right to the creek and caught a crawdad.”
That made me feel better.
The opossums were the best behaved. After triggering the trap, they just finished eating the food, laid down and waited to see what happened next. When we approached the traps, they snarled at us, but that and playing dead are their only defense mechanisms. Some didn’t even snarl. None played dead.
Amelia said one trapped opossum didn’t seem to want to leave the cage, which was a lot different from the raccoons’ behavior. They were angry and showed it.
The first raccoon we trapped in my yard turned over the cage and dragged it from one end of the yard to the other. We thought someone stole the cage, until we looked to the other side and found it. The raccoon also bit or broke off the handle on top of the trap, which made it tricky to pick it up without risking our fingers. I wrapped an old dog leash (which it also tried to bite) around the cage, and we carefully carried it to the car. The racoon must have been making its rounds each night. It was heavy and looked like it didn’t miss too many meals - probably none.
As soon as we opened the trap in the country, it took off.
We didn’t trap a single squirrel, although several times the cat food was missing from the trap, and the trap door remained open. I should have set up a camera to see how they did it.
I kind of miss the opossums. Maybe a few remained to roam around the backyard again. I’m sure we didn’t trap all of them.
Sharon, my wife, suggested that we let some of them go, but I’m glad we didn’t. There were just too many competing for the cat food. They are now in a better place, probably loading up on crawdads.
The traps are now silent. I have not set mine since Amelia caught the second raccoon in her backyard. It was probably the same one that looked through my backyard sliding door a few days earlier.
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