You Win Some, Lose Some

Many persons have a love-hate relationship with wildlife.

They love to see moose, elk, deer and bears when they’re driving or near their homes. They marvel when they see once-endangered bald eagles dive for kokanee. They even have a warm feeling when they spot one of those masked raccoons.

When birds and animals create problems for them, though, their sympathy vanishes.

Take raccoons. When they invade a property, they can be a nuisance. They tear up lawns, set up housekeeping in the oddest spots and they eat food set out for pets.

One North Side resident, a fly fisher who fishes several times a week, has returned from fishing trips twice the last month to try to get rid of a raccoon that decided that his chimney would make a comfortable home.

The man discovered about a month ago that the raccoon was in his chimney. At first, he thought the raccoon was a female that decided to raise her youngsters in the chimney. However, he couldn’t see the inside of the chimney well enough to see baby raccoons.

For a brief period, he considered lighting a fire and smoking out the raccoon and its youngsters. However, he quickly abandoned the thought because, he realized, a fire might set a raccoon’s nesting material on fire, create a fire hazard and kill the tiny raccoons.

Eventually, he concluded the raccoon was a male.

He called the Fish and Wildlife Department, only to be told that the agency doesn’t trap or move wildlife unless the animal is a threat to people. He was told he could call a wildlife control company, employ a trapper or rent traps.

He called a trapper and then went fishing. Meanwhile, the raccoon made a mess of his neighbor’s lawns. Although raccoons are nocturnal animals, the big raccoon was seen occasionally wandering around the neighborhood.

When he returned from a productive fishing trip to Montana, he learned that the raccoon had eluded the traps. Later, he became aware that the raccoon was wandering around in the neighborhood. A good time, he decided, to evict the raccoon from his home in the chimney. He and his son climbed to the roof, put two layers of chicken wire over the chimney and secured it.

Figuring he had solved the problem, he went fishing again. When he returned a few days later, he discovered that the raccoon had bitten through the two layers of wire and was still using the chimney as his home. He called the trapper and told him to resume his efforts to trap the raccoon. Then he went fishing again. When he returned, the trapper said the animal was still at large.

The frustrated fly fisher said he’ll put another chicken wire cover over the chimney and hope that the raccoon will give up and find a new home.

Another Spokane resident pondered his options after a raccoon began giving him headaches and a spokesperson for the Fish and Wildlife Department told him the agency doesn’t have enough manpower to trap and move raccoons, skunks and other non-threatening wildlife. One day, he saw the raccoon perched high in a tree.

He got out his bow and arrow, aimed his broad-head arrow at the raccoon and let go. To his chagrin, the arrow went through the raccoon’s body and into the tree, pinning animal to the tree. Considering the height of the tree and the danger of falling, the archer took the easy way out.

“I just let him hang until he rotted,” he told a friend.

Birds and animals are opportunists. Many will overcome their innate fear of people when they’re hungry and food is available for the taking.

For about two weeks, a heron had been killing small trout in a net pen at Loon Lake. The pen was covered with mesh to prevent herons and other birds from eating the fish. The heron couldn’t pull a 4- to 5-inch fish through the mesh. However, it learned that it could get part of a fish by standing on the net so that it was on the water and then poking its long beak through the mesh and biting off the heads of small rainbows. It then ate the heads.

The people in charge of the pen tried to scare the heron by firing a shotgun above its head. But it soon became accustomed to the noise. Finally, they installed a second net over the first net and the heron gave up.

Don Ostlund, who has a trailer on Granite Point Resort’s property at Loon Lake, is making arrangements to install a new dock near his trailer and he wants to keep ducks and geese from defecating on the dock. He’s considering trying a method devised by a Spokane (Long) Lake resident.

The man, tired of cleaning bird feces off his dock, strung an electric wire from his house to the dock and hooked it up a hotplate. He put firecrackers on the hotplate and covered everything with a garbage can lid. When birds got on the dock, he turned on the electricity. The hotplate quickly got hot and the firecrackers exploded, blowing the garbage can lid into the air.

After a few explosions, ducks and geese shunned the dock.

To get rid of troublesome birds and animals, it seems, you have to outsmart them.

You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.