I feel your pain. No one knows the damage these animals can do unless they have lived through it themselves and I have.
Many times the raccoons are families traveling together so keep setting your traps. Since you got 2 good sized ones, it maybe only the youngsters left. But you need to get them too, now that the parents taught them where to find food they'll keep coming back.

You should see what they do to Neoregelia bromeliads. Rip out the whole center and shred the leaves!

I'm still setting the trap but may have hit a snag. The racoons seem to have figured out how to get the peanuts I'm using as bait without actually having to go into the cage! The past 2 days I've gone out to find that the ground around the cage has been dug up and all the peanuts gone. I think the racoons have been working their way under the cage from the outside. Tonight I plan on piling rocks all around the end of the cage where the bait is.

As long as any captured racoons don't hiss or lunge at me I'll do my best to relocate them deep into the state forest. If they do try to atack me then I'll have dad deal with them.

We had that problem too. DH drilled holes in a tuna can then wired the can to the cage and put the peanuts in the can. Then he used stakes driven into the ground to hold the cage secure. Here we can call animal control and they relocate them for us. I feel sorry for these animals, but when they destroy my food crop and my plants something had to be done.

In my younger years I had a raccoon as a house pet. He was house broken, walked on a leash, rode in the car and slept with me at night. His eyes weren't even open when I got him. I had him fixed and he had all his shots, but the Vet didn't know to give him a feline distemper shot, which he got and died from. But he had a few very happy years and loved my German Sheppard. There was a small zoo, and they had too many raccoons, when this female had another litter. They were going to destroy him, so I took him. He was 2 days old.

Peanut Butter sandwiches work really well.

Karalynn, the same thing happens in my yard. However, I have seen the squirrels doing it. They eat all parts of my gingers. This year I've only started to see significant damage. Seems it is worse during heat and drought and then slows down with summer rains? Maybe coincidence. I am going to try keeping water in my bird bath daily. It has a crack so it drains too quickly.

Yesterday, after work, I stopped and bought some chili powder and ground cayenne pepper. When I got home I mixed both with some oil into a paste which I then smeared on the stems of all my remaining gingers. Next time a critter munches on the plants they'll get quite the surprise! I just hope this works.

Karalynn, I just walked around my yard and noticed many, many new ginger stems and cones that had been completely chewed off. I quickly filled the leaky birdbath. Let me know how your new paste does. I may have to wage battle here too.

Anna

Well the pepper paste lasted a couple days until a brief rain shower washed much of it off the plants. Shortly after that, the munching on the gingers started all over again. I really think I'm going to have to put up a fence and let mom's dogs into my yard in order to keep the damage to a minimum. That's an expense that's just not in the budget this year!

How about getting some hardware cloth and making little cages for the gingers until you can find something else. You would have to use something to anchor them to the ground. The rabbits like the baby crotons I have. After they get bigger they don't seem to bother them, so I made these little cages. They don't look so pretty but it saved the plants. We have a fence and that doesn't stop them.

I have an old bird cage over one ginger and a neighbor gave me a homemade squirrel cage that I'm converting into protective surround for another patch of gingers. The problem is that I have so many gingers that are scattered over a large area that it would be fairly expensive to buy enough cloth, supports, and stakes to protect them all. And it doesn't seem to matter what the size of the plant is, the gingers they're going after now are about 2 1/2 to 3 feet tall. Plus, I don't think that cloth would be much of a deterant to either squirrels or racoons, they'll just chew or rip their way through. Both seem to be good at getting either through or around any obstacle that's in their way. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I don't think the fence will keep the animals out, it's needed to keep the dogs in. Mom's dogs do a pretty good job of keeping animals like racoons and squirrels out of their yard. By fencing in my yard and putting in a gate to my parents yard I'm hoping the dogs will keep the critters out of my yard as well.
Here's a picture of mom's dogs. The golden retrievers name is Toby but he's pretty old and doesn't chase much anymore. Cheddar is a beagle/basset mix who loves to track things down although so far he's never actually caught anything.

LOL, hardware cloth isn't material. They can't chew through it, you need wire cutters to cut it. It is wire mesh with small grids maybe 1/2 inch square. I don't believe it is very expensive, but I haven't bought it in awhile we keep using the same cages over and over again. We used plastic tie wraps to secure the ends of it together to make the cages. It comes in a roll and you can make it the size you want.

Cute dogs. :o)

Thanks for the clarification! I wonder why it's called cloth when it's made of metal? That's probably what the homemade cage is made from. I'll have to stop by Lowes on the way home and price it.

Maybe it goes by another name as well, but that is the only one I know it by. :o)