Toronto is known as a "clean" city, but it still has enough readily available garbage to support a very large raccoon population. The city is able to provide necessary shelter (in the form of attics, chimneys, garages, porches and mature trees) and a convenient supply of food from your garbage.

The number of raccoons in an area depends on the amount of available food and shelter. If one of these factors is reduced, the raccoon population will decline.

Thinking of poisoning, trapping or shooting a raccoon?

You should be aware that:

• It is illegal to locate and trap wildlife.
  
• Placing poison in such a way that it is accessible to animals is a contravention of the Criminal Code of Canada.
  
• It is an offense to use leg-hold traps or snares to catch animals in Toronto. Anyone breaking this law could face a fine of up to $1000. While live trapping an animal is legal, you should do so only after you have tried all other alternatives.
  
• Hunting without a license or discharging a firearm within municipal boundaries is against the law.
  

How To Prevent Problems In Your Home

The two most effective and humane ways to prevent problems with raccoons are:

Secure your garbage so that you do not attract and feed raccoons (garbage cans are to raccoons what bird feeders are to cardinals and chickadees).

Secure your home so that raccoons cannot find convenient shelter within.

Secure Your Refuse

When you adapt your garbage can, remember that raccoons are intelligent and agile, but they are not stronger than people. If you cannot pull the cover of the can away bare-handed, you will have defeated any effort made by a raccoon to gain entry.

Your garbage can should have a lid that fits tightly. If this is not possible, you might try hooking a bungie cord from one side of the can to the other to secure the lid. You could try placing a large rock on top of the lid to secure it, as well.

Garbage cans with twist-top lids are the best deterrents. They are available from hardware stores at a reasonable price.

Usually raccoons gain entry into garbage cans by tipping them over, which is why it helps to have the cans stored in racks, or tied in an upright position.

Put your garbage out on pick-up morning instead of the night before - raccoons are nocturnal creatures who usually feed at night. If you store your garbage in a shed or the garage, make sure that the doors and windows are closed tightly.

If you live near a restaurant, ask the manager to ensure that the refuse bin lid is closed nightly.

Secure Your Home

Animal control experts have come to realize the importance of securing entry points in preventing many chronic wildlife problems. The Toronto Humane Society endorses most exclusion techniques as humane, as well as long-lasting and cost-effective.

Ways to secure your home:

• Check Your Home: Keep garage and shed doors shut. Check porches, decks, sheds and garages for holes or weak areas, make sure there are no animals living inside and then seal them up securely. Regularly check the roof and eaves, and block all holes using galvanized sheet metal. Use six millimetre rust-proof screening over open vents.
  
• Trim Branches: Raccoons can jump short distances and may gain entry to your roof via trees or branches that extend to the roof or slightly above it. Keep larger tree branches trimmed so they are not within reach of your house or garage.
  
• Remove Unused TV Antenna Towers: Raccoons will use television antenna towers to climb onto the roof. If you no longer use your tower, arrange to have it removed.
  
• Install Bright Yard Lights: To discourage nocturnal animals, use at least one 100 watt bulb for every 15 square metres of yard space.
  

Cap Chimneys: All chimneys should be capped to prevent entry by raccoons or other wildlife. The average cost of capping a chimney is far less than the average cost of removing a trapped raccoon. Chimney caps are also a safety device, as they prevent sparks from leaving the chimney. They are available at hardware stores. Municipalities should be encouraged to enact by-laws or building codes to ensure that new houses and buildings have chimneys capped during construction. This minimizes the cost to the owner.

Raccoons have set up house - what should I do?

Don't panic! Try thinking and planning. Raccoons really are not smarter than we are; sometimes it just seems that way. Check to see how many raccoons there are, where they are "denning" and how they get in. What hours do they keep as they go about their daily (and nightly) affairs? Is the intruder a mother with babies?

Tried-and-true, Do-it-yourself Eviction Method

If a raccoon has gained entry to any part of your property, close all but one point of entry. To determine which hole is being used as an entry or exit, cover all holes with a piece of plastic or stuff a rag or ball of paper into each hole. If the plastic, rag or ball of paper is gone the next day, the hole is being used as an entry or exit point.

To encourage animals to leave on their own, leave a repellent such as cayenne pepper of the commercial product Ropel™ around the entry and inside the hole, position a transistor radio tuned to a talk station and the volume turned up as high as possible, and train a bright spot or flood light on the hole. If done simultaneously, these three actions will encourage animals to find a nicer-smelling, quieter, darker nest.

To measure the effectiveness of your eviction method, ball up a piece of newspaper and place in the hole which you are concentrating your eviction procedures. If the paper is pushed out the following day, replace it and check the next day. Continue doing this until the paper remains untouched in the hole for 48 hours - a sure sign that the nests are no longer in use.

At this point, clean out any debris, and seal over the hole. The best sealing product is hardware cloth, a very thick wire mesh through which animals cannot chew. It is available at most hardware stores. Seal the hole with hardware cloth and then cover with siding, wood or other covering of your choice. If the area in question is underneath a porch, the covering should be stretched around the whole base of the porch and buried into the ground a foot deep and about 8 inches, in an L-shape, tokkep the animals from burrowing under it.

Use the same procedure for chimneys. After the raccoon has left, make sure there are no kits trapped inside. Cap your chimney as soon as possible. You may also want to call in a chimney cleaner after you have evicted the raccoons; otherwise, raccoon bedding material may pose problems when you want to use the fireplace.

Humane Wildlife Removal Companies

If the tried-and-true, do-it yourself exclusion method is not successful, then contact a humane wildlife removal company. They are listed in the Yellow Pages under "Extermination and Fumigation". The Toronto Humane Society recommends using a humane company that will carefully evict or remove the animals and then seal over the nest hole to prevent re-entry, releasing the animals in the same area.

When Not to Live Trap

Raccoons usually have one litter per year, with an average of three to seven young per litter, from March to July. This means that from late March through June, there may be baby raccoons entirely dependent upon their mother for food and protection.

Any action that prevents the mother raccoon from caring for her babies will result in suffering for her and a slow death for them. Since the family will not stay forever, or even for very long (a month or two, maybe less than that), it is better to wait until the summer, when the family vacates, and then take action that will prevent the same thing happening next year.

If You Have To Resort To Live Trapping

If the animals are persistent and refuse to leave on their own, as a last resort you may wish to employ baited live traps to capture them. A wide range of humane wildlife traps are available from municipal animal control agencies or from professional wildlife removal companies listed in the Yellow Pages.

Live trapping often takes many weeks, and is sometimes ineffective if food is abundant elsewhere. This method is found to be the least effective unless handled by professionals.

If you must resort to live trapping, it is important that the animal be released in your backyard.

If you have followed our suggestions for securing your home, you should not have recurring problems with raccoons.

Are You The Only One In Your Area Trying To Discourage Raccoons?

If this is the case, it is likely that you will still have an expanding raccoon population. It is important to speak with your neighbours and the manager of food outlets in your area to encourage them to secure their garbage.