So my daughter comes over, all excited, telling me there are racoons in the kibble house. Four of them!

Well, we don’t want them eating all the kibble meant for the cats, so I go to chase them off, grabbing my phone, just in case there’s enough light to get a picture.

As soon as I came outside and they saw me, they all just smashed themselves into a pile of pelts.

There was more than four of them!

At the time I took this picture, I was thinking there might be five of them. I didn’t quite see the one being sat on in the middle.

This particular mama cat was pretty chill about the whole thing, but the bandits were really not happy to see me.

I tried moving around to the end, so they could see I wasn’t going to block them, and they were free to run off, but they just mashed themselves into an ever tighter pile! That one in the middle froze into a loaf and would not move.

I finally went around to the back of the kibble house, banging on the wall. It wasn’t until they started running off, one at a time, that my other daughter was able to see that there was six of them!

Four of them ran off, but two were still jammed into a corner. I finally took a mop and sort of waved it at them to scare them off. Only then did one of them take an aggressive stance, leaping towards the mop and snarling. So I moved around to the back again and banged on the wall with the mop. One finally ran off, while the other squeezed under the cats’ house.

I have never seen this many racoons all at once before! Judging by their sizes, I’d say they are a young family unit.

I don’t know if our chasing them off will discourage them much, though. Between the bird seed by the living room window, where we normally see racoons, and the kibble house, they know there is consistent and reliable food here.

Right now, it’s not a problem. They’re just going for the easy food, and not destroying things. They are, however, notorious for destroying garden corn crops in particular, and we don’t have anything strong enough to deter racoons.

I think we need to invest in some Bone Sauce from Perma Pastures Farm soon! From some of their videos, it works on critters other than deer, too.

Why do all these destructive critters have to be so gosh darn cute?

The Re-Farmer