If you live in an urban or suburban area in North America, there’s a good chance you have a group of raccoons living close enough to take advantage of the food you’ve unintentionally left out. If you choose to leave trash cans outside of your home, you may quickly find yourself increasingly well acquainted with your masked neighbours. As you wait on wildlife control in Newmarket, here’s why raccoons are attracted to garbage and how to prevent incursions in the future.

Raccoon Senses

While some people think of them as little more than as tiny dogs, they have some significant biological differences from canines. This is because they come from a family of creatures that emerged separately from dogs and cats. Raccoons have excellent senses of sight, hearing, and touch. In some ways, their most developed sense is touch, and this is evident in their extremely human-like hands.

You may think that garbage would be unappealing to almost any mammal, but the taste is a subjective matter. Because the Procyon family has evolved an extremely long digestive tract, raccoons’ stomach acids have plenty of time to kill harmful bacteria that develop on rotting food.

Over the centuries, raccoons have learned to consume only foods that aren’t harmful to them. Just as our human senses tell us when a piece of meat is rotting, their senses make the most dangerous foods seem repulsive and unappealing. They find plenty of items that we tolerate well, like chocolate, onions, and raisins to be toxic and indigestible. Though they may accidentally consume these foods when searching through trash, most animals survive after such brief exposure. 

Keep Supplemental Food Sources Out of Reach

One of the most common ways people accidentally attract animals to their property is by accidentally leaving food sources outdoors. Raccoons are omnivores that can feed on a wide variety of foods. This means that even seemingly innocuous objects like bags of birdseed can be irresistible to your curious local mammals. Other offerings like outdoor cat food or birdhouses can have a similar effect. Always keep these items in a locked shed or indoors where animals can’t get them.

Since garbage is often one of the most appealing objects of all, you should keep it in a garage or another closed area. Of course, this may not always be possible, as trash needs to be taken outdoors regularly. Keeping refuse inside can also be difficult to manage if you live in a small apartment with little indoor space to keep smelly trash bins. 

Lock Trash Bins Tightly

It may sound obvious, but keeping your trash cans and containers locked is extremely effective at keeping raccoons out. Unfortunately, critters are excellent at getting into all but the most well-protected containers, as their dexterous hands and persistent spirit can easily conquer regular ones. The best solution is usually buying wildlife-proof trash cans that are specially designed to keep animals out. 

If you can’t afford to or don’t want to spend money on another trash can, you can try double bagging all of your refuse. This reduces the smell and also makes it harder for animals to tear through. To increase the potency of your defence measures, keep all of your containers within range of a motion-detecting light. Nocturnal creatures love darkness and often flee at the sight of bright light.

Raccoon Removal in Newmarket

These animals are an important part of urban, suburban, and rural ecosystems. While they deserve a chance to live, you shouldn’t have to deal with constant, destructive intrusions into your home and personal space. The best solution to a wildlife invasion is calling a humane removal professional. At Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control, we have over 30 years of experience safely removing even the toughest critters from people’s homes.