If it was a raccoon he probably had to wash up before dinner.

so sorry. Borrow a have-a-heart cage from your local humane society to
catch it and take it in to them. They will take care of it.
Elaine
"old dirtbeard" wrote in message
.net...
Well, he came back again last night -- pulled out the tomato plants and a
bell pepper plant. I saw a muddy paw print and believe it is a raccoon. We
bought the chemical animal deterrent (capsicum pepper-based), and spread
it around, but that did not deter him in the least.

He also took a bath in our swimming pool, while he was at it (the dirty
rat), and muddied it up.

We bought a "scarecrow" motion atctivated water sprayer and put it by the
koi pond (he was trying to catch a koi as well), but probably will need to
buy another one for the garden.

Wish us luck...if it is the racoon I have seen around, he is a big old guy
who "owns" the territory.

doug

"Leon Fisk" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 08 Jun 2006 00:48:19 GMT, "old dirtbeard"
wrote:

We live in Palos Verdes (suburban Los Angeles) and have some mysterious
animal pulling freshly planted, small tomato plants out of the ground at
night. It is not eating the plants, but for some reason, pulls them out
of
the ground and leaves them there.

Being that it is nocturnal, I could guess at an opossum or a raccoon, but
I
have no idea why it would pull plants. I thought maybe an opossum looking
for snails, but it keeps returning and pulling out the same plants about
every other night.

We put bird netting over them, but it apparently got under the netting
and
pulled them out again last night.

Any ideas of what strange beast we have lurking here at night?

There should be some sort of track. If not place dirt or
sand so that there will be a track/foot print left. Take a
picture of the print if need be and post a link. You'll get
plenty of opinions

Raccoons, Opossum and Squirrels all have distinctive tracks.

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
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