Biks' Raccoon Page!

The Raccoon story so far:

I live bordering a state park in Marlborough, Massachusetts and when I first moved here, I started to enjoy the visits from all the assorted critters that would stop by and visit. (Deer would chew on our lawn 5 feet from the house during wintertime!)

I had purchased a bag of deer food and built a little feeder further from the house, hoping to entice some deer to stop by on a regular visit. (and to stop chewing on our precious lawn.) We noticed a bunch of squirrels started munching on the corn in the feed, so we started to focus on attracting squirrels. After a while, a lone raccoon stopped by the feeder and of course we freaked out and grabbed the camcorder and screamed, "We got a RACCOON!!" Eventually this raccoon stopped by often, and we were able to entice it to come to us with other goodies.

Biks at keyboard

Biks at his computer w. critter

Around this time I had bought a bird feeder that you mounted under a window. If something landed on there, you could really get a good, close-up look at it and it was sturdy enough so you could really pile the food in there. I wanted to get a close-up view of some of the squirrels, so I had bought some feed corn and threw it in there.

Then one night, while we were working on stuff, a raccoon climbed up onto the feeder! Of course we went ape-shit and freaked out that a RACCOON was sitting on it! We all hushed ourselves and crept up to the window. The raccoon just sort of looked at us while were were all panting with our good fortune. I figured that raccoons must like something better than dried corn, so I started to fill the feeder with cat food. Of course the raccoons enjoyed this even more, so a bunch of them would now arrive every night and climb up onto our feeder.

Eventually we noticed that the original lone raccoon was a mother, and she started to arrive with her 3 babies. They would all sit in a tree while she munched away at the window. Pretty soon THEY started to eat at the feeder..and we would have 4 raccoon bodies piled onto this one platform! We counted about 12 raccoons that would come by that summer. Pretty soon I was able to just walk outside with a bowl of catfood, and they would approach me and tug at my leg, hoping to get at the goodies before I even poured it in the feeder. Soon they were waiting at my back door, looking up to the window and waiting for me to turn on the light.


Couple of shots of the feeder w. critter

After a while, I was able just open the door, and they would come inside to the little alcove and happily munch away on the catfood I left on the floor. I would use an elastic hold-down rope to keep the door closed enough to keep the bugs out, and they would use thier little paws to fling open the door when the wanted to leave! This was very handy during the winter, when they would let themselves in so I wouldn't have to stand outside in the cold.


Critters inside my little alcove.