It’s been a very busy last few days at the shop working on the Redbull Challenge thing, so I haven’t been able to devote any time to the Raccoon Menace. I set the trap last night covering the entire cat door again and locked the cats in with my 10 year-old so they wouldn’t wake ME up, but there was no sign of my foe last night.
The food was uneaten, my computer untouched, and the barricades I emplaced to prevent him from getting into the house proper were still intact this morning.
Once we can get a critical pneumatic lift system functioning reliably for the project, I’ll have more time to improve the trap. While I’m loathe to place it outside (because I’ll start catching neighborhood cats), it may be worth it for the ‘who knows?’ factor. Also, if I catch another squirrel like I did a few days ago, the humor potential is pretty high. After all, how exactly WOULD General Growth Properties handle a loose squirrel inside Gateway Mall, hypothetically speaking?
A followup to this morning’s image. I was at the shop most of today and didn’t have a chance to check it out until later today. I finally discovered the actual cause of the premature traptulation. When wandering past the computer, he stumbled on the cable that handled the motion-detection.
The software compares video frames for changes and activates if there’s a difference. It turns out that if frame 1 has an image of the food bowl and frame 2 has a ‘picture’ of ‘CAMERA DISCONNECTED’, they do not match and the logic to fire the trap is run.
Some footage of the raccoon itself in motion. Damn his furry soul…
The raccoon may or may not know how to use computers. He entered the house, the trap was set off without him in it. I need to review the tapes and figure out how it went off without him in the cage. WHAT.
The group I’m in was just picked to participate in the Red Bull Creation challenge so I was out quite late last night. By the time I staggered into home, I was too tired to set the traps and cameras, so we barricaded the cat door for the night.
Tonight, I hope to try out the new trap. I’ll have video eyes on it and hope to have footage of the monster in its new cage-shaped home soon.
Watching the logs this morning from the first night’s attempt with the computer-enhanced trap, I thought cat shadows had set off the motion detector. The computer that was supposed to record ‘the big picture’ had helpfully shut down for Windows Updates an hour before the event, so I could only refer to a collection of snapshots from the detector itself.
On further review this afternoon, I discovered unmistakable evidence that what I thought happened had not happened and realized I would need to change my trap. A lot.
Clearly, I have underestimated my foe in the past, but no longer. I have tried to meet him on his battlefield: creature versus creature. This is foolish for he is clearly a better creature than I, a human, who because of civilization am separated somewhat from the mad scrabble of wilderness and the required base cunning it engenders.
This was a mistake. To win, I must use skills he presumably does not have but I possess: Skills of technology and science.
I have modified the animal trap so that it no longer matters how delicate his touch is when reaching over the pressure plate to grab the food. It no longer matters whether or not he can use some sort of raccoon magic to float through the air to secure the prize without triggering the door, because I am now using COMPUTERS.
I’ve attached a camera that looks down into the cage and am monitoring it with Yawcam, a program that can perform actions when motion is detected within a specific area.
When the raccoon enters the cage, the motion will cause it to execute a program that uses a electromechanical servo to trigger the pressure plate manually, trapping this furred bandit so I can take him elsewhere.
I also now have a camera set up to capture the grand event, recording with my Microsoft LifeCam. The end of his revolution, friends, WILL be televised. View the attached video to see the setup if any of this is unclear.
I set the trap last night, but when I woke up, it looks to have been triggered by one of my goddamn cats walking past the lamp and changing the light level JUST ENOUGH to set it off. I’ll play around with the lights to avoid a recurrence of this tonight, but I anticipate success in the near future, barring other interference from my GODDAMN CATS.
This raccoon has become my furry white whale, I know, but from hells heart I promise I _will_ catch it.
Before going to bed, I set the trap. Last night’s bait: one uncooked chicken egg. I tried to use peanut butter to bind it to the trigger plate, but my foolish decision to purchase creamy instead of chunky once again came back to punish me. Oh hubris, thou art merciless with thy lessons!
I retired to the Raccoon Operations Monitoring Strategy center (aka bed) and slept.
At 3:30, chaos visited my home.
I woke to clattering and thumping downstairs, punctuated by animal noises. “Aha!” I thought, “the game is afoo-AARRGH!” and tripped on a box on the floor of my unlit room. I banged into things in the noisiest way possible while trying to avoid faceplanting into something sharp and succeeded, but at the cost of stealth.
Dazed, I turned to apologize to my wife for waking her and was met instead by an uninterrupted snore. The two kittens that had set up camp atop her blanket-covered form woke long enough to meow a complaint at me then went back to sleep as well.
I walked downstairs, my phone in flashlight mode held out before me protectively. From the noises, there could be a swarm of raccoons trying to trap their freed buddy as far as I knew. The thumping had stopped, but there was now an ominous crunching noise. Crunch. Crunch. (pause) Crunch.
At the bottom of the stairs, I turned to our family room and checked the cage. Empty. Then movement caught my eye and I realized that the grey shape I had seen was in fact the raccoon. He was… leaning on the cage. Casually. And in his hand, he had cat food.
Staring at me, he swallowed then slowly and deliberately put another piece of catfood into his mouth. Crunch. The noises I had heard earlier? Possibly related to our catbear ‘Bender’, a giant house lion (killer of birds, scourge of mice). When I get downstairs, he’s sitting on the couch watching the raccoon. I don’t know if they’ve been battling or if there’s some sort of professional courtesy thing going, but the chaos noises have stopped.
I’d like to take a moment to unexpectedly talk about my son Marcus and some of the social challenges he faces in school. It’s a brief side-story, I promise. Marcus (10) likes cats (he’s the 10 year old male version of the ‘Can’t Hug Every Cat’ song, check YouTube if you’ve not seen it) and this is usually fine except for when it intercepts social interaction with non-cats (specifically, humans). Speaking with him a few weeks ago, I discovered that Marcus had decided that when he wanted to be left alone at recess, it was a hassle to _tell_ people who were coming to talk to him because it took valuable time to explain that no, they were still friends but yes, he just wanted to chill for a little. “Instead”, he told me, “now I just hiss at them.” This was distressing for any number of reasons, and I told him that taking a page from the Cat Book is not always the best answer. We talked about how important it is to use our words (even when it’s a hassle), and how we as humans have options cats don’t when it comes to asking folks to back off.
Moriarty to my Holmes? Or Mr. Krab to my Plankton?
Back to 3:30 this morning, I’m facing the raccoon. We’re in one of these standoffs. The egg is sitting unmolested within the cage, I now realize that the thumping I heard was him trying to open the catfood bin in the next room, and even though I keep looking at the cage, he just won’t go into it. We stand there, then Raccoon takes the next step.
I mean literally, he takes a step towards me. Oh HELL no. So I, calling on millions of years of evolution that has led to the species of man which can harness the atom, fly to other planets, look into the depths of creation itself, respond instinctively. I HISSSSSS at him.
“Nope”, the raccoon says with his body language, “I don’t have time for this flavor of crazy.” He turns and heads out the cat door.
I secure the cat food behind a door and trudge wearilly upstairs. Last night’s battle wasn’t a draw, it wasn’t a stalemate. It was a loss. The image of that cocky son of a sow leaning on the cage and casually popping Whiskas like they were popcorn, that’s the image that’ll stay with me for today.
