It’s not uncommon to see raccoons out and about at any time of day this time of year, foxes too. I am frequently asked, “is that normal for animals to be out in the daytime or should I be worried about rabies.” This time of year the adults are foraging to feed young. The issue is babies, not rabies. Other times of years I might be leery about seeing ‘coon and fox out mid day, but not April, May, June. ‘Coon will den up in houses, either ripping holes in roofs, soffits etc. or simply finding existing holes as pictured. This female was coming up on the porch rail and climbing the batten strips to the soffit, then to the other side of the living room. One company was going to trap for a number of days, but if the female is there with young she will usually come out every night and usually be captured quickly. The client correctly questioned, wondering why it should take that long to trap a single ‘coon. In this case the trap was set at 6 p.m. The catch was made at 11:21, just hours later. Five little rat sized baby ‘coon, not yet with eyes open, were taken from the ceiling.
The trap pictured is a custom 6x11x36 with a flush mount adapter making it 42 inches long overall, a bit longer than usual, but great for this situation where there was room. While standard raccoon traps have openings of 10 or 11 inches by 12 frequently, we found that 9×11 is fine the vast majority of the time. For positive den setting even smaller traps are adequate, like this trap with a 6×11 opening. In fact, for these conditions smaller is actually better, pushing the raccoon right into the triggering while giving them little room to react to fast closing powered doors. Even smaller are the chimney traps with a 5×9 overall opening which is only an incredibly tight 3-3/4 x 8-1/2 inches on the inside that is still capable of taking 20 pound ‘coon.
