Raccoons are omnivores, which means they will eat both plants and meat. They are scavengers that frequently seek out meals in people’s trash cans. They can pull lids off, tip cans over, and leave garbage strewn all over a yard or driveway. If you have found trash scattered about, a raccoon may be to blame. Here are some tips to help you keep raccoons out of your trash cans.
How to Secure Your Garbage Cans
Raccoons have dexterous hands that they can use to pry lids off trash cans. One easy and effective way to prevent this is to secure the lids with bungee cords. Put a bungee cord through the handles of the lid to keep it securely in place. You can also put a concrete block on top of the lid to make it too difficult for a raccoon to remove.
How to Make Your Trash Less Appealing to Raccoons
Raccoons are attracted to the smell of food in trash cans. You can double-bag your garbage to make the smell less noticeable. You can also use scents to repel raccoons. They find the smells of ammonia and mothballs unpleasant. You can pour a small amount of ammonia on your trash or scatter mothballs around your garbage cans to keep raccoons away.
Raccoons don’t like the feeling of dust on their paws. You might be able to keep them away by scattering baby powder or sand around your trash cans.
Raccoons like to have water available when eating to drink and to wash their food. Remove any water sources, such as bird baths and pet bowls, from your yard.
How to Exclude or Frighten Raccoons
Another strategy is to separate your trash cans from the rest of your yard with a fence. Make sure the fence does not have any spaces that a raccoon could fit through.
You can also try to scare away raccoons. Since they are generally nocturnal, you can keep them away from your garbage cans by installing motion-activated lights or sprinklers or by setting up flood lights around your cans.
Raccoons try to avoid humans. You can trick them into thinking humans are nearby by putting a radio set to a talk station near your trash cans.
What to Do If These Strategies Don’t Work
Raccoons are clever and may figure out ways to get into your trash cans even if you try all of these strategies. If these methods don’t work, you may need to have the raccoon trapped and released. You should not try to capture a raccoon yourself. It could bite you and infect you with rabies. Trust the professionals at Anderson Wildlife Control to humanely trap and relocate the raccoon. Contact us today to get an estimate for our raccoon removal services.
