Boy, this is complicated. I don’t know whether to start by explaining about my tree house…or my raccoons…or the fact that I smell like a urinal.

Okay not EXACTLY like a urinal…more like those deodorant pucks they put in urinals? I smell like a deodorant urinal puck because of the raccoons. In my tree house.

See, I have this treehouse. It’s a modest loft up in some tall cedars where I like to go and watch the sunset. Or used to. Until the raccoons took it over.

Nothing against raccoons. They’re very cute with their little bandit masks and stripey tales and they don’t howl like coyotes or chew electrical wires like squirrels…

But they eat a lot. And after they eat they leave…calling cards. All over the deck of my tree house. I wouldn’t complain if I was sharing the tree house with one raccoon. Or even a mom and a couple of kids.

But judging from the deposits I find each morning, I’m playing host to a West Coast raccoon convention every night.

Now as a kid I worked at the Stock Yards, and I’ve mucked out stalls in a horse barn. Believe me, raccoons can hold their own with horses and cattle. Actually, I guess ‘hold’ is the wrong verb. If raccoons could ‘hold’ anything we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

I know what a farmer would do in this situation, but I’m an old Peacenik. Termination with Extreme Prejudice was out of the question from the get-go.

Dogs? I have two dogs. But they are certified Welfare Bums. They know the Alpo will be in the bowl come sundown regardless of their performance on night patrol. Besides, raccoons are ‘way smarter than dogs.

So, what? Live trap them? Well, live traps are expensive. And besides, that would catch me one raccoon. I’ve got about thirty-five. I was looking for a group solution.

I tried wrapping the trunks of the cedars in polyethylene. The coons just dug their claws in deeper and trudged on up to the tree house. I tried a tiny electric perimeter fence. The coons daintily stepped over it.

I bought some expensive pest powder guaranteed to discourage all kinds of rodents. I believe the raccoons ate it.
A biologist friend assured me that the answer was to sprinkle mountain lion urine around the deck.

Yeah. That would be good. If I knew an incontinent mountain lion.
“Try mothballs” somebody else advised. “Raccoons hate the smell of mothballs.” All right! I bought a box of mothballs, made up a half dozen net bags and placed them hither and yon on the tree house deck.

And watched as the mothballs disintegrated in the rain.

I was buffaloed. I remember standing at a urinal in the BC Ferry Terminal (I do some of my best thinking there)…muttering to myself “I need something that smells bad but won’t dissolve in moisture”….

It was my Eureka moment. The solution to my problem was practically…at hand. It was staring me right in the face.
Urinal deoderant pucks! If raccoons hate mothballs, they’ll despise urinal deodorant pucks! And urinal deoderant pucks are used to moisture.

Just to set BC Ferries custodial minds at ease, I want you to know I bought my own. At a Janitorial Supply store in Victoria. Bought ‘em, brought ‘em home and dished them out like poker chips all over the deck of my tree house.

Did it work? Too early to say. I’m going to give it a couple of nights, then pop up to the tree house and see what’s what.

But I can tell you this…if the smell of those pucks deters raccoons the way it’s deterred my friends, neighbours and folks on the bus I’ll be getting my tree house back to myself real soon. All to myself.

I’m Arthur Black on Planet Salt Spring.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 24th, 2006 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.