Acck! I had a critter in my house friday night.

Hubby and I went out to diner friday and come home and I go to close the dog door in our luandry room, I notice Midas cat food dish that is normally on the counter gone, weird, so I go outside and there it is and torn to bits and there is this wier fur around it. So somehting came in thru the dog door while we are at dinner, cant believe the dogs allowed this.

I showed the fur to my neighbor and he thinks it sa possum.

Just great, now I have to worry about this. We weere on vacation, my parents stayed a the house to watch the gang, well I told them to put garbage in the garage and on trash day to put in the big can outside and take dow to street.

My mom tells me one morning they wnet out and the outside can (which is huge and heavy) was knocked over and kind of dragged. I never had this happaned and by the way all the bird feeders were knocked down and broke. I am thinking I never had this happen, then she says, Well I did put melon rinds outside because I didnt want ot stink up the garage. grrrhh, I hope she didnt start something by attracting wild animals

honeybear

 

A possum is possible but I don't think they are powerful enough to knock over a heavy trash can. My guess is a a marauding band of Raccoons.
A possum is really harmless to both you and your dogs but a large raccoon can be dangerous. I would call your local animal control office and request a Have-A-Heart type trap so the "visitor" can be safely be relocated.
I have a resident possum that travels our back fence almost every evening. Drives the boys nuts but I don't let them bother it because possums are good insectivores and their main diet is roaches. I will take the possum over roaches any day.

 

My Mother in law lives on the outer skirts of Reno, NV and has raccoons come in the dog door and go through the house. Scares the heck out of her dog and cat and they hide under the bed while the raccoon eats the food out of their dishes.

 

I remember when I had the Possum come in my bed rooM!!! Let me tell you, they are NOT friendly creatures!!! He tried to bite both us! Needless to say, Granvel shot it with his compound bow, he chose that over the shot gun...didn't want holes in the walls now did we! As long as they stay out side, I don't have a problem with them. But when they get inside and won't go out!!! Then we ahve a problem. They do not play dead when cornered. Trust me on this!!! At least this one didn't! He growled and snapped at us like a dog!!!

Here I was trying to keep it alive and put it outside, but after he did all that, he had to be disposed of!

COons are bad. They will fight a dog three times their size. We bottle fed one from a newborn and he still grew up to be mean, we neutered him at 6 months. But still after 3 yrs old, he got really mean....for no reason.

 

It definitely sounds like a raccoon to me to. Like Dukesdad said they can be very dangerous little creatures. We had a couple living in our barn over the summer and one of them actually killed one of our Tom cats. My husband set traps caught them and took them to the wildlife refuge.

 

It definitely sounds like a raccoon to me to. Like Dukesdad said they can be very dangerous little creatures. We had a couple living in our barn over the summer and one of them actually killed one of our Tom cats. My husband set traps caught them and took them to the wildlife refuge.

 

it does sound like coons in the garbage, but the fur from the cat dish doenst look it . I am afraid for for both dogs and cat, like you they can cause serious damage. and por Jake would have a hard time defending himslef now because he is wearing a cone for his hot spot.

We have some companys here that traps and releases wild animals. I will look into that.

about eight months ago, I heard a noise outside our bedroom (glass door) there were 2 raccons staring in! So I ended our compost pile. and had not seen any since, I think because it is end of summer and so dry, they are looking for food and water.

And neighbors down the road had abear in their trash last year, so I am hoping our trash can incident is not a bear

honeybear

 

You could get one of those doggie doors that only opens for dogs wearing the special collar-thingy that goes with it.

My sister sent me a photo of a possum standing on her bird feeder. I'll have to try to remember to find it when I go home and post it.

 

we've had bears looking in our windows, coyotes sitting in the backyard watching us doing dishes, HUGE bull moose with full antlers hanging around the backyard, last year I fed a couple of orphaned baby raccoons to get them fattened up and through the winter (someone hit their mother with a car and the babies were hanging around her carcass in the road - for fear they'd get hit I moved the mother's body out of the road....the babies stayed around the neighborhood for survival), once helped a weasel get out of a pickle after he'd fallen down between the outside of the building where I worked and the sheetrock and he couldn't get out (I got him out).

I love wildlife - I don't encourage it to come that close to my house - but I love having them around.

WE have a Butcher bird (not the correct name but it's the nickname) that'll pull mice out of holes in the ground and then fly off with them. Hawks, owls.....No possums though that I've seen. I can't imagine being terrified of a raccoon. And my state is a rabies state.

 

Wow! I think I'll move to New Hampshire!

We have squirrels. That's about it. *sigh*

 

LOL Jamiya....unfortunately the area where I live is getting too built up!!! I hate seeing homes (seasonal to and that makes it even worse that vacation homes are taking up so much space). There is a section of woods near our house where I saw a bobcat wandering around a couple of time - as we speak it's being cleared and ONE home is going in there...a home for people to come play in the area and stay. They don't care either about what is around there - they'll complain everytime they see something other than a squirrel....it disturbs me that they allow so many homes to be built around here when there are tons on the market now

 

Mar, NH is a beautiful state. wouldn't waznt to live there in winter time. lol. My hubby and i use to haul paper up there. We have raised racoons. We had one named smokie for years then one day he decovered how to lewt him self out of the great big cage we had made for him but you could play with him, had another and the kids got tired of it so we gave it away and the people that got it put a leash and collar on him and lead him around the roads.

 

LOL, kindness and amd Mary you are too funny. I can just see a domestic racoon. luckily I back up to 800 acrea this guy owns and he is a nature fanatic, you can even bring trapped rattlesnakes to the feed store and tehn he takes them on his property and lets them go.

we brought our property years ago and then I didnt want to build because I felt like I was in the boonies, well since we built 9 homes have been built on our street. good news is you have to have minimum 3 acres

honeybear

 

wow, it sounds like i'm missing out on all of this wild life too :lol: all this talk of people having 3 acres and even more is completely perplexing to me! we live in los angeles so there's nothing too crazy like that at all.
our house is up in the hills and we have a lot of land for our area, so we have some small animals. there's just not a lot of land left anywhere out here, and if there is it's a million dollars for a single acre.
we see squirrels though and there's the skunk that my husky has been sprayed by 3 or 4 times now. i found that my husky had killed some giant ugly rat-looking thing one morning, which i later learned was a opossum. what can i say, i've always lived in the city so i know nothing about nature and wildlife, personally don't care to either. that was a few years ago. i saw a coyote walking down the side walk once though, in the real early morning, it was a definetly a coyote my dad had told me. i have no idea where they're hiding out during the day in l.a. though. i guess there's still a lot of empty lots up in the hollywood hills somewhere, lots of brush and hills.

 

we only have a little over an acre...but it's pretty rural and quiet. It would be great here if my neighbors would move :y_the_best: