It's Easy Being Green

I’m not sure whether it’s the hot summer nights or the copious amounts of backyard barbecues happening about now but I sure have noticed both possums and raccoons out on the prowl late at night. In fact, I almost ran over two raccoons who were fully engaged in trash can debauchery when I was coming home the other night.

If you’re experiencing nightly raids on your trash cans, you can tell what kind of thief your dealing with by looking at the leftovers. Dogs knock cans over and rip into bags to get at the delights rotting away inside and they’ll strew the mess everywhere. Possums tend to leave a trail of half-eaten food as they picked through what they wanted and munch on it while walking away with their take.

Opossums will leave a trail of food behind them after making a raid on your garden or trash can.

The most cunning trash thief of them all is probably the raccoon. The smart nighttime prowlers can carefully let themselves into trash cans. They’re known to pick through the garbage, pick out what they want, clean it off and then dine on their new found smorgasbord.

Raccoons are smart and nimble. They can make well-thought out raids on your garbage.

So how can you go about protecting yourselves from those trash thieves without trapping them or poisoning them(both terrible options if you ask me)? If you have the money to buy yourself predator proof trash cans, that’s a fantastic way to go but one household chemical also apparently acts as a pretty good trash thief deterrent: ammonia. Just put a teaspoonful in your garbage can and maybe even some in the bag of trash before you tie it up. Also sprinkle some around the base of your trash cans. Those late night thieves will come across the ammonia and won’t be too excited about what might await them inside.

Let us know if you have any tips on how you’ve been able to ward off late night trash thieves or what your experience has been with the four-pawed, neighborhood crooks.

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