Masked critters still get a pass in Toronto

[…] The city has a variety of tips for discouraging raccoons, all useless. Sprinkle soap flakes on the lawn and water thoroughly. Drip diluted tabasco sauce over garden fruits and vegetables. Sprinkle naphtha flakes around the house until it smells like a giant mothball. Soak some rags in ammonia and hang them up.

For a while, we tried human pee. No luck. Some friends tried playing CBC Radio One really loud, but the raccoons developed a taste for As It Happens. My husband rigged up a small electric fence, hoping to keep raccoons out of our tiny backyard pond. But all he did was electrocute a squirrel.

The trouble is, we have unwittingly bred the most successful, most competitive raccoons in the history of the species. York University’s Suzanne MacDonald, an expert in animal behaviour, calls them über-raccoons. “Urban raccoons have had many generations of dealing with opening garbage cans, prying open windows, eavestroughs, pet doors, garages and the like,” she told me. Thanks to these evolutionary pressures, they’re getting smarter faster than we are. And they’re multiplying faster, too. Today, according to the documentary Raccoon Nation, there are 50 times more raccoons in the city than in the country. […]