On 9/21/2011 1:39 PM, j wrote:
On 9/20/2011 2:05 PM, Notat Home wrote:
I live in a city, but love sweet corn so I grow a little in my garden.

Unfortunately, raccoons have discovered my corn and are eating it before
it is ripe. The city frowns on killing them, and trapping doesn't work
because you just get one at a time and they find their way back after
being released.

So I am looking at building a fenced area, with wire fencing on the
sides, and netting on the top. I found what seems to be an affordable
welded wire fence material, but the openings are 2 by 4 inches. Is that
small enough to stop raccoons, or do I need to find a material with
smaller holes?

I've stopped them with around 4" x 4", in fact a bit bigger. I had a cat
door that I kept shrinking in size until it worked! With that, if a wire
broke, you would still be OK.

Someone here had mentioned folding some of the bottom of the fencing
onto the ground. You may not be able to afford that with the height of
the corn, but I think a bit of fence on the ground, under the fence line
would be a good idea.

They are damn clever animals. I'd put little beyond them after they had
no trouble unlatching my big cat food container.

Jeff

Neighbor came down one morning to find raccoon in his kitchen eating out
of the cat bowl. It had come in through his cat door.

I've trapped raccoons in my Hav-a-hart. Should have bought the biggest
one as originally I had bought for groundhogs which are smaller. I can
catch a small raccoon but not a big one.

http://home.comcast.net/~frank.logullo/thief.pdf

I've never had one return from the park where I put them about 4 miles away.

What's weird here is that you are allowed to catch these critters but
not relocate them but can kill them. Before I knew this, I released a
squirrel in the county park with a county cop parked right next to me
and he did nothing. The parking lot was near a county police substation
and I told him I had come to release a prisoner.