Raccoons are Evil Pure Evil. They're not cute, cuddly, funny little critters. They're Evil Vermin Of The Night.
We live on a creek in a fairly rural setting here in central Texas. We're used to critters. We have lots of different critters, and they're usually not a bad problem, but this last week the raccoons have wreaked havoc here on the homestead.
First, raccoons bit into and drank a full bottle of Arm and Hammer liquid laundry detergent that we'd left out on the steps of the deck when unloading the groceries out of the car...figured it would be OK there until morning, after all, what on earth would bother laundry detergent, right? They drank it...the evil little b*stards DRANK IT. There were no puddles, no evidence of it just running out onto the ground, just an odd blue stain on the deck steps from what came out of their initial puncture wounds to the bottle. We found the bottle punctured in about six places, and a hole chewed in it, with their nasty little pawprints all over it.
The next night, they chewed their way into our laundry shed, and bit into (and drank dry...again, no puddles) the other TWO bottles of liquid laundry detergent we'd had stockpiled up on a shelf. Of course, they got their pawprints and general nastiness all over the Maytags on their climb up. They sure do seem to have a taste for liquid laundry detergent...and this is the unscented/dye-free/sensitive skin stuff that's supposedly "pure". That makes THREE bottles of detergent gone, about $12 total, down the gullets of the Evil Ones.
A day or two later, we had emptied out our concrete birdbath (the bowl on top of the pedestal is a little over two feet across, and weighs about sixty pounds) because there was supposed to be a freeze that night. The evil vermin evidently jumped up on the rim during the night, looking for water, but with it empty, their weight flipped it up and off the pedestal, and down onto a nearby stepping stone, shattering it into about eight un-glueable pieces. One very nice birdbath ($50) down the tubes.
These are huge raccoons...we estimate them between 30 and 40 lbs...and they're brazen...they will just stare at you if you confront them, they don't flinch when you shine the flashlight in their beady little eyes. There's at least three or four of them in the immediate vicinity, maybe more, and they breed like rats. You can hear their alien-from-another-world chattering at night as they make Nasty Raccoon Love. We've greatly reduced the amount of bird seed that we put out for the cardinals (we have a flock of about three dozen that congregate here in the winter) so that there's not much left at the end of the day for the 'coons to feed on. Last time we tried to trap them, they destroyed the traps. Obliterated them, bent them beyond recognition. We've tried the coyote-urine-on-cotton-balls deterrent, which did nothing but wrankle our noses, so we've pretty much figured out that we're stuck with having them around, since we're essentially in *their* world. You'd think that between the coyotes, the bobcats, and the huge owls we have around here, at least ONE of those would enjoy the taste of a fat raccoon, especially one recently binge-drunk on laundry detergent, but noooooooo...nothing eats the nasty things!
Ok...raccoon rant over. One good thing came out of this, though: losing three bottles of expensive detergent made us think that maybe we should try something different. Also, wiping away the stains from the stuff (which was "clear" in the bottle), it looked purple, and when we sprayed the spot with water, it turned an odd antifreeze-like orange color before it rinsed completely away. Pure, hmmm?
So, we googled for homemade powdered laundry detergent recipes, and realized that we already had the two main ingredients, washing soda and borax. Got a coupla bars of the Fels soap, made up a batch, and we couldn't be happier with the results. One tablespoon of this stuff is all we need to use. We also put 1/4 cup vinegar into the fabric softener rinse cup of the Maytag agitator at the beginning of the cycle, and it really does soften the clothes, and neutralizes whatever smell the Fels has. As we can't stand any sort of fragrance in the laundry, this has been a perfect transition. AND, we're going to be saving a LOT of $$ by going the homemade route, while not tossing yet another plastic jug into the landfill every couple of weeks.
Now, if we can just find something that will eat raccoons...
We live on a creek in a fairly rural setting here in central Texas. We're used to critters. We have lots of different critters, and they're usually not a bad problem, but this last week the raccoons have wreaked havoc here on the homestead.
First, raccoons bit into and drank a full bottle of Arm and Hammer liquid laundry detergent that we'd left out on the steps of the deck when unloading the groceries out of the car...figured it would be OK there until morning, after all, what on earth would bother laundry detergent, right? They drank it...the evil little b*stards DRANK IT. There were no puddles, no evidence of it just running out onto the ground, just an odd blue stain on the deck steps from what came out of their initial puncture wounds to the bottle. We found the bottle punctured in about six places, and a hole chewed in it, with their nasty little pawprints all over it.
The next night, they chewed their way into our laundry shed, and bit into (and drank dry...again, no puddles) the other TWO bottles of liquid laundry detergent we'd had stockpiled up on a shelf. Of course, they got their pawprints and general nastiness all over the Maytags on their climb up. They sure do seem to have a taste for liquid laundry detergent...and this is the unscented/dye-free/sensitive skin stuff that's supposedly "pure". That makes THREE bottles of detergent gone, about $12 total, down the gullets of the Evil Ones.
A day or two later, we had emptied out our concrete birdbath (the bowl on top of the pedestal is a little over two feet across, and weighs about sixty pounds) because there was supposed to be a freeze that night. The evil vermin evidently jumped up on the rim during the night, looking for water, but with it empty, their weight flipped it up and off the pedestal, and down onto a nearby stepping stone, shattering it into about eight un-glueable pieces. One very nice birdbath ($50) down the tubes.
These are huge raccoons...we estimate them between 30 and 40 lbs...and they're brazen...they will just stare at you if you confront them, they don't flinch when you shine the flashlight in their beady little eyes. There's at least three or four of them in the immediate vicinity, maybe more, and they breed like rats. You can hear their alien-from-another-world chattering at night as they make Nasty Raccoon Love. We've greatly reduced the amount of bird seed that we put out for the cardinals (we have a flock of about three dozen that congregate here in the winter) so that there's not much left at the end of the day for the 'coons to feed on. Last time we tried to trap them, they destroyed the traps. Obliterated them, bent them beyond recognition. We've tried the coyote-urine-on-cotton-balls deterrent, which did nothing but wrankle our noses, so we've pretty much figured out that we're stuck with having them around, since we're essentially in *their* world. You'd think that between the coyotes, the bobcats, and the huge owls we have around here, at least ONE of those would enjoy the taste of a fat raccoon, especially one recently binge-drunk on laundry detergent, but noooooooo...nothing eats the nasty things!
Ok...raccoon rant over. One good thing came out of this, though: losing three bottles of expensive detergent made us think that maybe we should try something different. Also, wiping away the stains from the stuff (which was "clear" in the bottle), it looked purple, and when we sprayed the spot with water, it turned an odd antifreeze-like orange color before it rinsed completely away. Pure, hmmm?
So, we googled for homemade powdered laundry detergent recipes, and realized that we already had the two main ingredients, washing soda and borax. Got a coupla bars of the Fels soap, made up a batch, and we couldn't be happier with the results. One tablespoon of this stuff is all we need to use. We also put 1/4 cup vinegar into the fabric softener rinse cup of the Maytag agitator at the beginning of the cycle, and it really does soften the clothes, and neutralizes whatever smell the Fels has. As we can't stand any sort of fragrance in the laundry, this has been a perfect transition. AND, we're going to be saving a LOT of $$ by going the homemade route, while not tossing yet another plastic jug into the landfill every couple of weeks.
Now, if we can just find something that will eat raccoons...
