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[Mister_Ruysbroeck]

So, here's the story of me and my father in law disposing of a family of racoons.

My in-laws live out in the country on about 10 acres of property that is fairly wooded. Being in the country, they are prone to having mice and other rodents scurying about their property. To control such pests, they always have cats.

Well, raccoons and badgers and things like that also find their way onto the property from time to time. Raccoons and badgers don't really like cats. Well, they like to eat them, I guess. The cats, however, are needed to control the population of mice and other rodents.

Anyway, one weekend night this spring when my wife and I were staying out there, we heard some hissing from the cats. We went outside to see what all the commotion was. Usually, it's a tom cat that comes around looking to score, but this time we saw the resident tom hissing at a rather scary looking raccoon. The raccoon decided not to fight and retreated up a nearby tree and disappeared. So, we figured it probably lived it that tree.

The next day, we got a ladder out, loaded up the .22 and decided we had to kill the raccoon while she (yes, it was a she. more on that later) was sleeping in order to make sure the cats wouldn’t get killed. We couldn’t get a good view into the hole it was living in, so we just pointed the muzzle of the .22 in there and fired off about 5 shots. We heard this awful screaming sound and decided to climb back down the ladder. About 30 seconds later, the raccoon crawled out of the tree and fell to its death. We must’ve hit it a few times, as it was bloody when it appeared from the hole.

Problem solved.

Or so we thought. The next day, we were out mowing the lawn and heard some noise coming from the same hole in the tree. We got the ladder out again and tried to get a better look in the hole. To our surprise, there were about 5 baby raccoons in there. They were probably starving since they hadn’t been fed in a day. So, we decided to put them out of their misery.

We needed a way to get them out of the hole, though, since we couldn’t reach down in there to get them (hole was too deep). So, we got out the garden hose and began flooding them out. As PLF already said, water + baby raccoons = really bad. The screaming began almost immediately, which roused the interest of the cats.

Eventually, the baby raccoons climbed out of the hole. We grabbed them and threw them down to the cats, who had a fun afternoon playing with their new toys.