At first, I was thrilled to learn from the neighbors that the chicken bones atop my garbage can were probably not from an intruder snacking in my backyard late at night but simply a raccoon(s).

Raccoons are so cute – adorable little bandits.  And I set out to outsmart them by installing a lock on the can. Except for occasionally forgetting to unlock it on collection day, it seemed to be a great success.

Seemed to be.  Until I went outside one morning and discovered that my lawn had been freshly “tilled” and concluded after Googling that the garbage-hungry raccoons had likely found a new food source: grubs.

Grubs? Why do I have grubs? I Googled, and was astonished to know they come with over-watering:  something I’ve never been accused of. Watering is so much trouble.  But then we’d had downpours, and maybe in the grand scheme of things God had intervened to help out the raccoons and punish me by offering up a ready snack.

Or maybe God had intervened to humble me with still another news bulletin that I had underestimated the challenges of lawn care. My ill-fated attempts at fertilizing had already sent me into the arms of a lawn care company, so I rushed to send them pictures of my freshly tilled lawn.

Their first inclination was to send a critter control person my way who – for $375 + $75 an animal – was eager to trap the intruder(s).

Cost aside, this sounded fairly appealing. I would get to face my hungry invader eye to eye. But unfortunately, turns out this is not the sort of trapping my dad used to do when the bird feeders were being ravaged. In those days, he set up a box trap, then carried the invader – usually a squirrel, once a possum – off to a faraway park for release.  As annoyed as I was at the raccoon, I wasn’t ready have him – or all his pals – sent to their final reward.

As luck would have it, I’d already enlisted an animal-friendly critter control company to check over my house before winter – just to make sure I had no openings for unwelcome invaders. I could tell from the start it would be a thorough inspection. Not only did a veteran wildlife watcher arrive. He was accompanied by an eager young apprentice wearing a full facepiece respirator and toting a high-powered light.

On the happy side, not one crevice. My newly acquired vintage home was a virtual fortress. But then they looked at the lawn.

“Probably raccoons,” I said. They squatted down and squinted at the squarish holes in the turf.

“Nope,” they said. “Skunk.”

Nothing would budge them from this opinion, and at this point, every solution the eager apprentice suggested – citrus, bright light – was rejected by his supervisor.

“You’ll just attract other animals,” he said, “and they can barely see.”

The most original solution came from my eight-year-old grandson, who spent an afternoon constructing a “trap” consisting of paper covered with sticky masking tape and peanut butter. He gave it “a one percent chance” of working, which turned out to be right.

No luck, and probably a good thing. I had no interest in offending the visitor, who so far has not raised his tail and sprayed.

Killing the grubs seemed like a better choice – but not a sure solution, according to the critter duo, because raccoons actually PREFER dead grubs.  They are less work to catch. They might even call in their buddies to join in the feast. What?!

Either way, this would be a boon for the lawn care people, who would be spreading grub killer everywhere just in case, and might need to re-seed the lawn, but there wouldn’t be a good time for that till NEXT fall since they also needed to apply weed control.  Yikes!

All of this leaves me in awe of my next-door neighbor Jack, who somehow knew he had grubs weeks ago, killed them, re-seeded, and now has a lawn reminiscent of the Augusta National in April.

It also leaves me uncharacteristically eager for a snowy winter. Blanketed with white stuff, for at least a month or so, our yards will look exactly the same.

Copyright 2021 Pat Snyder