 Okay. Good morning, everyone. Again, welcome to today's Nature Boost presentation. Today we have Raccoon, secrets of a familiar neighbor. I'm your host, Marcie Rich. I am the Teen Services Librarian at the Merced Branch Library and a big fan of the Raccoon. Let me first take a moment before we go any further to acknowledge that the San Francisco Peninsula is the ancestral home of the Rameitush-Oloni peoples. The Rameitush-Oloni peoples continue to live, work, and play here today. They have not ceded, lost, or forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. It is with the deepest respect that we recognize their ongoing stewardship of this land. We have some upcoming events to tell you about as well before we begin. We have another Nature Boost tomorrow connecting the dots, Muir Woods hidden figures. That's tomorrow at 11 a.m. same place, the San Francisco Public Library YouTube channel. We have dialogue revealing an imperial war in San Francisco. This is part of Filipino American History Month and SFPL celebrates the work of Lydia Ortiz, our Filipino American History Artist for 2021. We also have Book Club, the Undocumented Americans by Carla Conejo via Vicencio. And right now, I am delighted to introduce Megan Isidor, wildlife ecologist. Megan will teach us about the Masked Bay Area resident, Raccoon, and how humans and raccoons can peacefully coexist. Megan worked with raccoons as a wildlife rehabilitation specialist. She has run a wildlife human mediation advice line and she now heads the River Otter Ecology Project. We'll have a Q&A question and answer after the presentation. So if you're on YouTube, please put your questions in the chat and we'll make sure to share them with Megan. And now without further ado, take it away, Megan. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Let me just get my slides up and we will get started. Hi everybody. Thank you so much and thank you especially to the San Francisco Public Library for hosting us today. Hooray for libraries and for librarians. You bring us so much knowledge and delight and you have really suckered and helped us through this awful pandemic for the last couple of years and we appreciate you hugely. I'm Megan Isidor, I'm the founder and director of River Otter Ecology Project, but for many years before otters popped into my life, I met Yggdrasil's raccoon team. Both of our projects are based on the unceded lands of indigenous tribes including Oloni, Miwok, and Pomo who have stewarded this land through generations over millennia. We honor with gratitude the land itself and all of the ancestors past present and emerging and we thank them for their strength and resilience in protecting this land and we aspire to uphold our responsibilities according to their example and what a legacy and responsibility we have here in the Bay Area which is a land full of fascinating wildlife including the amazing raccoon sometimes called a raccoon by Native Americans. Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue is San Francisco's wildlife center and they work in cooperation with the San Francisco Animal Care and Control and directly with the public to rescue, heal, and return wild animals to live their natural lives as well as to educate all of us about wildlife. During my talk, Marcy will post information and brochures about YUWR Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue and what they do in the chat and I suggest you check them out. There's a lot of really good information and great volunteer opportunities in there for you to look at. So it's a real pleasure to talk about coons again. It's been a lot of years since I've got to do this and they remain one of my very favorite animals. Actually raccoons and river otters have quite a lot in common. They're both very beautiful, playful, local mammals, both are really intelligent, solicitous, and loving with their young and both species can be very fierce when cornered and perhaps most surprisingly both of them can do super well in cities. And today we're going to talk quite a bit about raccoons in urban areas. I'm going to talk about raccoon natural history, hopefully correct a few of the persistent myths about raccoons and talk about how to live in peace with your raccoon neighbors and other wildlife neighbors and I'll answer questions at the end. Now this photo is a pretty typical photo of raccoons doing their raccoon thing. They're opportunistic omnivores which means they eat everything they can get both plant and animal. They eat about 40% invertebrates that's a lot of insects, crabs, and crayfish when they can get them. About 33% of their diet is plants and about 27% is vertebrates. And most of those vertebrates are small animals like mice, rats, frogs, lizards, things like that. Now as you can see here river otters are not at all shy about coming into houses to scavenge. Like all wildlife they live in a constant search for food and we humans let them in by leaving windows open and unscreened. So rule number one, if you don't want wildlife to come in, either keep your doors and windows closed or screen them. I love this photo. My friend Frank has a cat door and he was coming downstairs one day and two big fat raccoons had come in through the cat door. They heard him coming down the stairs and they both tried to leave occupying the same space at the same time which really isn't something anybody could do. So rule number two, either latch your dog in cat doors at night and occasionally during the daytime too, I had a neighbor once who had a friendly neighborhood skunk who would come in through the cat door. The skunk would lie on the couch with her cats and she would come home, open the door and find them all cozy together on the couch. Very funny. So if you don't want wildlife in your house you need to latch your cat or dog door and there are new, new, there's new technology now which is really cool. I just discovered it when I was doing this preparing for this presentation. You can get your pets a special collar that's electrically activated through a chip on that collar and that'll open the cat and dog door for the pet but not for other wildlife. So a little bit of natural history now. Raccoons are in their own genus. They're the proscienids and they're the only species in that genus but our North American raccoons are called proscien low tour and they're related most closely to kinkajou, to kowati, I love this painting it's beautiful, and to ringtails. Most of those animals are found more often in Central and South America. Proscien low tour are North American river otters, I mean river otters are North American, I knew that would happen. Our North American raccoons are found in the United States and Canada and they're found in some of their countries too but mostly in the United States and Canada. So here they are our Northern River Otters. This is in a tree in my backyard. I'm lucky enough to live in the woods so we have all kinds of wildlife around here and this is a pretty typical picture of raccoons. They're arboreal meaning they live in trees, spend a lot of time in trees. If they can they have their young in tree tree trunk snags with holes in them to keep them safe and off the ground and and raccoons have a lot of adaptations that help them to be arboreal animals and we'll talk a little bit about those in a minute. So the weight how people always ask how big are they? How much do they weigh? They're about two feet long. They have that beautiful mask that nice thick fur. This is a Northern raccoon and in the North raccoons really have to bulk up much like bears during the summertime so that they don't hibernate like bears do but in the winter they spend a lot of time resting and sleeping and conserving their energy because it's hard for them to find food when there's a lot of snow on the ground. So the big adults weigh can weigh up to 60 pounds which is remarkable. That's a huge raccoon but for the most part the raccoons we see in the Bay Area they're smallish. They weigh about 20 pounds-ish as adults sometimes a little more than that and all raccoons have that stripey tail and that beautiful mask. So we were talking about arboreal raccoons, animals that live in or use trees quite a lot. They have adaptations like look at those front paws that allow that raccoon to be really safe on that tree. They have very very flexible digits that's their fingers and toes and look at its back feet. The back feet of raccoons can turn around almost 180 degrees so that they can cling to trees as they come down with those sharp claws and they can even cling on to a deck or something else with just one foot and imagine that imagine if you were trying to cling with just one ankle they're very very strong animals and they have those claws and fingers that help them get into places to get food and help them hold on to pray and help them climb up and down. Here's a couple youngsters. These were two of my rehab babies years ago learning to climb. Raccoons are not born knowing how to do everything. They're pretty much born knowing how to climb up trees not so good at climbing down trees. It's hard for them when they're little. They don't really realize that their back feet can turn around and hold them onto a tree. They have to learn that skill and here they are learning it on a tree low to the ground but a lot of times when I've had little raccoons and they're learning to climb trees they'll all climb up. They'll climb climb climb up really high a couple you know 50 feet up a tree and then they'll get scared and they won't know how to get down and they have to just figure it out because obviously I can't get up there to get them so I have spent many an hour urging raccoon babies to come down the tree and occasionally they do actually fall but as youngsters they're very very strong very tough a lot of times most times in fact they just kind of bounce stand up and walk away and I always am really concerned about it but they have always done pretty well with falling out of trees and they have to because they're arboreal animals. This I love this picture because it gives you a good view of their skin the skin on their hands and feet their front paws and back paws is very very sensitive and when raccoons put their food in water you often see that in fact the term proscien lotore means animal that washes with its hands and they do they get their hands wet in order to make the skin even more sensitive than it is and that really helps them to understand what it is that they're picking up what they're going to eat and helps them to find food as well so very interesting beautiful skin it's one of the few parts of the raccoons that is hairless so their feet and their hands actually get much colder than the rest of their body and can help them stay cool on hot days too they can put their feet and hands into water keep them cooler so most of the raccoons that we see are the beautiful gray black and white with the stripy tail but occasionally we see a very beautiful blonde raccoon or even a raccoon with no pigmentation at all this little gal was a blonde raccoon that a friend of mine in my who lives near me on a big property found her on a trail all by herself and he called me and he became a volunteer for just a urban wildlife rescue and he and a group of little gray raccoons grew up together and he took them to the creek every day and taught them how to find food and eat really important for rehabilitation animals to understand how to get out how to find their food and if we're not lucky enough to have a big area where we can take our youngsters out and help them learn what to do in the wild wildlife rescues have to teach that to them in in pens at their at their at their at their wildlife rescue places and it's hard to do so I have a lot of respect for the people who who do that in that way it's very difficult and important and here are a couple of my rehab babies learning about finding food and water you know I was talking about them being omnivores they eat they need to practice to find that food in the water normally their mother would teach them this but when they're rehab babies we have to put we filled that tub with water with crayfish with insects I don't think I ever got bought them live crabs but aquatic insects and crayfish for sure and they learn how to find that in the water with those very sensitive hands that help them to to hunt in dark water and here's just a photo of the another close-up of those claws look at those major claws this is a young raccoon a baby in fact and yet already they have very well-developed claws that help them hold on help them climb trees get prey and everything else they need to do and look at that fur so raccoon fur is very thick and very wonderful they have an underlayer of fur what you're seeing here on the ends of their toes over here these long hairs are called the guard hairs and then they have an underpelt that's very very thick and keeps them warm and dry in the winter and it's for that reason that that beautiful fur that they have that a lot of raccoons were hunted almost to extinction in various places and thankfully here in California there is no more hunting for any wildlife for fur fur trapping is now banned so and that's just recent so that's a really good thing and we need to keep on and spread that out across the country no fur trapping those animals need their fur and we don't so next I'll tell you a little about their life cycle this is a very new baby just a few days old and you can see it has very sparse fur eyes are closed ears are closed they weigh just about two and two and a half ounces at birth and both their eyes and ears open after about a month and you can see how helpless that baby is I mean they need their mothers they need to be with their mothers their mammals so they nurse from their mothers and they need to learn how to be raccoons in the wild and here's just a very little one eyes not quite open yet but getting ready to open I just thought that was such a nice photo I had to include it when they're young and still in the den the mothers make a den for them and the den is either in a tree if they can find one or and this is especially apopo to urban raccoons they will find a place in someone's house where they can find an entry into a basement or an attic space and they'll find the warmest coziest place they can because their babies are so helpless when they're young and they really need a good place for them that's safe from animals and humans so they'll tuck their babies in and a lot of times people don't realize that there is a raccoon nesting under their house or in their attic until the babies get older and start playing around together these are still pretty little babies but you can see the one at the top their eyes its little eye is open there so they're getting older you can see its little muzzle it hasn't elongated as they do when they get older it's still that little milk suckling muzzle and here they are a little bit older after about two months that's when people start realizing that there are raccoons in their house because they're very rambunctious and playful babies and a lot of times people will say oh my gosh there's something up in my attic and it's keeping me up all night long and that is often raccoon babies they bounce around they play they have a great time and here's our little blonde raccoon getting fed with a bottle as we rehabbers we have to teach these youngsters how to drink from a bottle and they don't like it at first but like all babies they get used to it and then they get weaned and start eating normal the normal raccoon type foods now I've showed you a lot of rehab raccoons but I'd like to show you now some wild raccoons because I do the river otter work we have trail cameras out in mostly national state and local parks and so we get all kinds of animals on our trail cameras their motion activated so when animals come by they activate the camera and we get video and this is a mother with six did you see that six little babies so raccoons have two to six young at a time for the most part six is a lot and those are hardworking mamas boy they have to teach each one of those babies how to do everything and the babies when they're young stick very close to their mom this was a long tamales bay where we have one of our wildlife cameras and these four little ones are just so fat healthy and happy and they appear to be on one of their first trips with the mother you see how they're testing out everything picking up everything trying it out seeing if it's food and that's so important for their for their learning and they use those hands they have a good sense of smell they have a really good sense of hearing their eyesight is very good at night because they have a special lens in the back of their eye which helps them to bring in light and reflect it out so they have excellent nighttime eyesight usually they're pretty nocturnal this one was at I think 10 10 o'clock in the morning and so this mother was probably hungry and out there looking for food and her little ones probably followed her so there they are so aside from eating everything I told you about raccoons are also really good scavengers so here's a mom this is Point Mays National Seashore and this mother has scavenged the remains of a cormorant that the river otters caught and ate most up and here she is bringing it in and showing her babies what to do how to scavenge and turn up your sound and listen here so I don't know if you heard that but that's two pretty small raccoon that's tussling over the remains of the cormorant and the mother went away with one of the other youngsters but when you hear raccoons in your backyard they make horrible noises they often sound like they are just killing each other and sometimes they're fighting sometimes they're fighting over food sometimes they can be fighting over mating sometimes they can be actually mating and it can sound really terrifying um usually raccoons don't really hurt each other too much their bark is generally worse than their bite but not always so sometimes they do get badly injured and have to recover from their injuries but for the most part when you hear raccoons fighting outside it's brief and it sounds awful but it's really not so bad so in the wild if they're lucky and don't get hit by cars they live for about seven or eight years they can live up to 21 years in captivity but no raccoon really wants to live in captivity very much um mortality is caused by getting hit by cars fur trapping and hunting actually in california they are killed as pest species quite often and that's something that we would really like to avoid happening um the reason that they're killed is because people get frustrated with them being in places that they shouldn't be or that are annoying to the people so at the end of this presentation we'll talk a little bit more about how to keep them out of where you don't want them they die of starvation on a fairly regular basis um if two out of four if half the pups that are born in a year survive that's a fairly reasonable rate uh their first winter is really tough for them so in the springtime around my house when um I often see very skinny yearlings luckily I live in the country and there's there's a lot of food for them around so they do reasonably well but not always they get illnesses especially distemper and parvo virus they get pero but parasites tuberculosis infections if they get injured they can sometimes get infected badly although usually they're able to take care of their infections pretty well um they have some predators coyotes wolves hawks owls big snakes um especially when they're young and that's why the young stay really close to their mother as much as they can until they're old enough to be out on their own but we've all seen the roads littered with dead wildlife and an awful lot of that dead wildlife is raccoons so um they are nocturnal and that means that they get hit more often than if they were diurnal so nocturnal means that they're out mostly at nighttime diurnal means that they're out day and night which river otters actually are pretty diurnal all right excuse me i'm just going to play this for a second look on to the right see that cat that's a bobcat and that's a raccoon so bobcats and raccoons are not particularly friends but they're also not mortal enemies this was in jack meany wetlands in point bay's national seashore we don't know why this is not going forward so the raccoon left this was actually hang on one second i'm sorry i have a frog in my throat one more good heaven sorry about that anyway this video is an 11 minute standoff between that bobcat and that raccoon bobcat was just hanging around and the raccoon came in and was feeling around and doing what raccoons do and the two of them just faced off for 11 minutes and we have all of it on video a couple of times there was a slash and then the bobcat backed off and the raccoon went away for a while and then did the raccoon thing because raccoons do not give up when there's something they want so it just kind of sidled back in turned its back a little bit to the bobcat so it didn't look so aggressive i'll show you this again and but still very wary both of them very wary of each other but like most wildlife unless there's a really good reason they're not going to mix it up and that's because the cost of fighting can be really high if they get injured they have a hard time finding food and it can be really tough for them so they would really rather not fight and you can see here this is a big raccoon actually it's big and fat i think this was in october so end of the summer big fat well-fed raccoon and a pretty small bobcat so fighting did not happen i'm happy to say now this is my favorite video of the whole presentation because i've got a raccoon and an otter so this is at point base again this is one of the otter layers and that otter has been bringing food into the lair a lot of those black birds like the raccoon got in fact this is where that raccoon got the birds and otters do not like to share food but raccoons really like to share food not with others but they like to take others food they are scavengers so this raccoon this otter wasn't having it and you can see the otter is pretty small but has no trouble at all chasing off two raccoons and raccoons are scared of otters otters will definitely win in a fight with a raccoon and they would they have no compunction about drowning animals that attack them or chasing them and biting them i've seen this exact river otter chase off two coyotes just a couple weeks ago we got that video it's fascinating so don't mess with raccoons and don't mess with river otters either that is the trick see that otter chasing him away he says go away get off and here is a coyote and the raccoon interaction see the coyote is chasing that raccoon raccoon is backing up that's typical for a raccoon it'll try to avoid a fight if it can but if it has to fight it's going to be fierce and coyote knows that so he is heading off i'm so glad that happened um a younger raccoon might not fare so well with a with a coyote fierce all right now we are going to turn to some of the problems that people have with raccoons why they happen and how you can avoid them so feeding wildlife this is just ridiculous but this happens more often than you would expect and if you've been to golden gate park into the area where the raccoons are and people feed them you will see something not quite as bad as this but pretty bad um raccoons or any other wildlife who is fed are going to come back of course they are there's their food so don't put pet food outside here you see a cat in a raccoon raccoons don't usually bother cats at all um but you don't want to get them close to each other raccoons and um domestic pets can share diseases a lot of raccoons have just get distemper there can be outbreaks of distemper which is a terrible disease and kills many many raccoons especially if they are congregated in an area like all these raccoons who are getting fed um it's just very very unhealthy and it's really bad for humans too because once those animals become used to getting fed they can get really aggressive they want their food and they're they're gonna come and bug you for it if you've been feeding them they're gonna come and knock at your door they're gonna climb on your house i had some friends who had been feeding raccoons for a long time and they they would put the leave their trunk open to take their groceries into the house and come back and find some of their groceries taken by the raccoons they're smart animals and if they're encouraged to come back um and to be around to your house they're going to be there so it's much better not to feed wildlife and now this one standing water outside during this drought i have been leaving water outside for the um deer and the wildlife as well as for the birds it's been so dry here and i just don't have the heart i live in the woods i want wildlife around i don't have the heart not to give them water however if you have running water outside your house first of all terrible for the drought don't do this don't let your water run out of your taps secondly if you're feeding if you've got water or food outside for your pets or for other animals than raccoons and other wildlife squirrels skunks um deer opossums everybody is going to come to eat so if you don't want wildlife do not leave food or water outside um water if you water your plants in the morning rather than in the evening um you're less likely to have wildlife but again with this drought if there's water out um animals are going to come and get it so reduce human caused food opportunities like trash here's a beautiful opossum who should not be eating out of the trash it's really dangerous for them um because people suddenly realize they have wildlife eating out of their trash cans they get mad they call pest control companies when pest control companies come and take an animal away california law is that they must either release that animal on the site where it was found which no homeowner wants or they have to kill it so it's much better to head those problems off before they start so natural food yay there's lots of food outside for all kinds of wildlife garbage nay clothes lids if you see a dumpster at a um park tell the park people about it tell them look this dumpster is open and look at all this trash all over here raccoons and other animals have been getting in there and storing trash around so they need to put a lid on that dumpster to avoid the problem i have found i have been called many times with people who say oh my god there's a raccoon in the dumpster that can't get out well then we have to either arrange for someone to come and um help it out or the or the people have to figure out how to do it and it isn't really hard if you find um an animal in a dumpster and it's not wounded it's not ill if you put a stick or a ladder in the animal can usually get out it's not a big deal but you can stop that problem from happening by closing lids and we as as um the public have every responsibility and opportunity to go and tell someone that you need to put a top on that dumpster um and often they will actually if enough people say to them get a top on there and here's another example of that some trash cans in a park that were not covered again an open invitation to wildlife of course they're coming in here is my trusty husband on our street so you can see we live in the country in the woods we put two bungee cords on our trash can and that keeps the raccoons out it works perfectly one bungee cord isn't really enough two is better and you may need to do more you know the thing is uh when you're dealing with wildlife issues if one thing doesn't work try another thing you don't have to just give up we're smart we're humans and we have a lot of tools and a lot of ability to solve problems like this and these problems are quite solvable so you can also call wildlife hotlines you can call animal care and control you can call people and ask for advice there are lots of us who have a lot of experience doing this and we can help you and at the end of this discussion i will help answer specific questions if you have them you want to avoid this as cute as it is this is again my friend frank's house he loves raccoons and he had a lot of them living in he had a weird house um and lots of openings for raccoons to get into so they nested and one day he came into his uh study and found this little raccoon face peering down at him very cute but we want to avoid it and we can avoid that by securing our homes and our buildings and the best the thing that i've noticed since the drought and since the fires and fire danger is that we're all kind of shoring up our houses anyway because of fire danger so we're putting new vents and um in our foundations and our attics and that is not only going to keep embers from flying in but it will also keep out wildlife and sure raccoons sure skunks sure um sure other critters but also mice and rats if you have a nice little um uh fine mesh vent on your foundations and and on your roof caps then um those critters won't come in don't forget um little um holes in the house where pipes come in uh check those make sure that they're covered too a mouse can get in through a tiny little dime-sized hole and a rat can get in through a tiny little hole as well so you want to make sure that those are covered and wire mesh is your friend here it's really good there are also other um things like foam and foams and different things that you can use to keep wildlife out uh you can talk to people at your hardware store about it um just do some checking around even online there's lots of good information and again wildlife rehab centers are often a good source of information here are some eaves and roofline issues you can see this adorable squirrel peeking out of the roof um it's really easy to miss holes under the eaves because they're back use a flashlight take a really good look under your eaves and see if there are holes now if you have animals in your house in your attic or your crawl space or wherever and the main thing that you want to do is ensure that that animal and if they have young their young are out before you close off those holes so there are ways to do that and we can talk about that but usually if you suspect that there are young in there it's a good thing to check with your wildlife rehab um your wildlife rehab locally and find out if they can help you ensure that the wildlife is out before you close a lot of the orphaned and wildlife that we get in is really young babies like you saw with those little raccoons whose mothers have been trapped and taken away and killed and the babies are left in the walls and that is not a fate that we want for any wildlife at all ever so um you can check about those things capping chimneys and roof vents is something that all of us who live in wildfire areas are making sure that we do especially well now so again if you're having that done um that's going to really help with wildlife getting in so wildlife is very curious this is a young raccoon who is hanging out you can see that there's a cat right up here hanging out the cat is not at all worried this is a little raccoon he's curious he's going to check out that trash so if you've got a lot of trash around it's going to attract wildlife not just because they're curious but also because they can find nesting opportunities in messy trashy places so cleaning up really does um go a long way toward getting rid of unwanted wildlife and i'm going to move on a little bit to some issues with outdoor trees wildlife loves to eat our fruits we all share our fruits our fruits of the wild so here's a um persimmon tree and some friends of mine were having a lot of trouble with raccoons climbing the tree and eating the persimmons and not just raccoons but other animals as well but they were specifically concerned about the raccoons so i helped them out with this tree collar which is similar to one of those collars that pets get when they have stitches and we just made it out of plastic we stuck it together and stuck it on the tree it's about three feet tall so that those long raccoon legs can't um get over it and it worked really well it kept those raccoons off the tree now that would not really keep squirrels or any of the really arboreal climbing leaping animals off that tree so we have another thing that we do sometimes and it's kind of works sometimes but not always and this is a up here the pink thing is a sponge soaked in ammonia so if you hang a sponge soaked in ammonia sometimes it can keep wildlife away but the other animals that eat persimmons and fruit are birds they eat a lot of them and really the only way to save your trees from birds is to net them which is a big pain and a lot of times a lot of people just share with the wildlife they eat some the wildlife eat some and that's kind of the way it goes but not always if you have a special tree and you want wildlife off it then you have to put up a barrier and the tree on the next tree over here is a very tall dug fir tree and this is my neighbor's house the raccoons were climbing that tree and getting onto her roof and keeping her awake and nesting underneath a deck on her roof so we put we got this big piece of uh oh i forget what it's called it's a big piece of very thick plastic about three three and a half feet tall and we wrapped the whole tree with it and it worked really well because the raccoons couldn't climb up that way and we kept it up there for several years and and finally after several years the raccoons were no longer used to using that tree so we were able to take it down and that worked pretty well again we don't always want to do these things but we kind of have to if we're going to live peacefully with our wildlife neighbors and this brings us to dogs the best way to keep these problems from happening is a couple of things if you have dogs and you're going to let them out into your yard um if even if your yard is fenced you open the door you clap a few times make some noise shake a can with coins in it do something to let the wildlife know that your dog is coming out now wildlife is smart and they know their neighborhoods just like you know yours so if you have a dog and your dog goes outside the wildlife in the area probably knows the dog is there but what they don't know is when that dog is going to come out so you need to make sure that you give wildlife time to get out of the yard and especially if they have young to get out of the yard in the springtime or um early to mid summer you need to make sure that um that the wildlife can get away before your dogs go out because we love our dogs and our dogs are great and no matter how well your dog is trained dogs are hardwired to chase wildlife and I think of all the people I know who are fantastic dog owners and fantastic dog trainers I only know one person whose dog is well enough trained not to go after wildlife and it takes constant constant training so um in places like in parks where there's wildlife or outside at night especially keep your dog out on leash at night because a lot of times there's raccoons under a car I had some work in Alameda once where raccoons were attacking dogs at night because people were letting their dogs go under cars even on leash dogs the cars the dogs were going under cars and um being aggressive toward the raccoons and they were getting it it was not a cool situation so we did some education out there and that worked really well people stopped letting their cars dogs nose under cars and same with storm drains a lot of times there's wildlife in or around storm drains so noise makers a can with pennies a whistle or even an umbrella and did these delightfully rainy days we might have umbrellas with us yay so that I'm going to um finish off the main part of my um presentation with this um video which I like so much because so many people tell me when they saw a raccoon it rose up on its back legs and and people uh interpret that as aggressiveness but actually it's not being aggressive it's curious it's standing up so it can see you better now aggression in a raccoon looks much more like what the raccoon was doing with the bobcat where they get down with their head down and their shoulders humped up to look big and their tail switches back and forth if that's what they're doing you want to back off slowly and just get away from them and leave them be um so uh here in the bay area we're so lucky to have wildlife species like raccoons and coyotes bobcats harbor seals whales river otters dolphins elephant seals they roam our local lands and waters a lot of them are urban wildlife and most people don't have much urban wildlife so we are really lucky to have it the wildlife enriches our lives and we have to do all we can to protect them and ensure that they're able to live natural wildlife so how do we do that besides learning all about them how you can help agracell urban wildlife rescue is a wonderful organization that takes in hundreds of wild animals every year if you are able to donate to them go to their website yuwr.org and donate you can volunteer with agracell or with other local wildlife centers if you'd like to there are lots of opportunities to volunteer and it's not always hands on some of that volunteer volunteering can be writing articles helping with newsletters helping with all kinds of other things if that if the hands-on part isn't for you there's all kinds of ways to support wildlife speak up for wildlife be a myth slayer i forgot to mention this but one of the myths about raccoons is that they all have rabies not at all i'm really happy to say that rabies is is not a problem for raccoons in california before this talk i looked up the most recent data on rabies in raccoons in california and the most recent was from 2018 and there was one case recorded of rabies any mammal can get rabies but there are some species in various areas that are more prone to getting rabies and here in california more skunks get rabies than raccoons but that also doesn't mean that you should be afraid of skunks most skunks that you see are just beautiful healthy and in great shape um but people often see raccoons that have distemper and they think it's rabies because they get runny eyes and they can get a drooly mouth and a drooly nose and they look awful and they kind of are wandering around in the daytime looking awful if you see an animal in trouble call for help call your local wildlife center call animal care and control the humane society autobahn call somebody and try to get help for that animal a lot of times animals just are hit by cars because they're sick or or they just die in a ditch somewhere it's and many many times they can be um healed and sent back to the wild and sometimes the kindest thing for them is for them to have an easy death by euthanasia instead of suffering for a long time and dying so if you see an animal in trouble absolutely call for help there's also um something in the chat I believe there's um some information about what to um a little infographic um what to to do if you find a wild animal that looks injured and finally vote for candidates who care about wildlife and wild spaces spaces that's one of the best things you can do wildlife needs habitat in order to thrive and survive so with all of that information I'm going to thank you all so much and stop sharing and really thank you for being here today I appreciate it so much and I'm happy to answer questions thank you so much Megan and we do have a few questions that's for sure um um let's see let's just jump right in um we've got a question right here please tell us how to keep raccoons from devouring our vegetable gardens oh do it well there's a couple of things first of all make sure they're raccoons although you don't have to because it's the same advice for most wildlife depending on what the raccoons are eating or the other wildlife is eating you have to either cover them put up a fence or um that's pretty much all you can do with gardens it's tough you have to you have to eat you can cover specific uh veggies vegetables with a with a wire mesh with uh what's it called chicken chicken wire you can do that that can help but if you have if you have vegetables out then animals are going to eat them they just are you have to cover them okay and here's an interesting question how is the milk formulated for bottle fed raccoons oh that's a really good question um and I used to know a lot more about this than I do now but there are um there are companies who make milk for different species and it's usually powdered and you mix it up and give it to the animal but I would not suggest that you do this on your own if you would like to rehab an animal definitely go do it through your local wildlife rehabilitation center it's illegal to keep wildlife um in California without uh a permit and you can do it through your center if you're doing it on your own it can be really tough you um I know everyone has the best desires to help these animals but there's science to it and you have to understand how much food to give them when to give it to them how to give it to them and how to keep them healthy while they're young so please do if you find wildlife and you want to say that call your wildlife rehab center okay um another interesting question they're all interesting questions thank you everyone where do the male raccoon parents hang out oh I love that question male raccoons are not invited to um to family life with raccoons they're much like lions male raccoons mate and they they will mate with any female around and females are not especially choosy either they will mate with any male around once they're pregnant their males are not invited to the area where they're nesting they find their most secret place they can and the males stay away until the raccoons are much older so if you see a group of male raccoon of raccoons it's and they're all adults it's probably a group of several males who sometimes hang out together in bachelor groups um if you see a single raccoon it could be a male it could be a female without babies but the best way to know if it's a female is if she has young with her or you can look you know you can look at their generals and see if they have testicles then you know it's a male but males are not allowed around because they do sometimes kill other males babies okay just a quick one do raccoons eat frogs yes just checking and let's see we've got here how high and what type of fence might keep raccoons out this is not necessarily associated with vegetable garden gardens question and do coyote rollers at the top of a fence also prevent raccoons from jumping over the top raccoons can climb really high so just just defense itself isn't going to keep them out you would have to have a top on that fence because raccoons are really excellent climbers as you've seen as far as coyote rollers that's a really good question and and I do not know the answer to it I think um I would call either call your wildlife center to find out the answer to that or um you could try calling the roller company and ask them uh raccoons are real like coyotes can't cling on and climb so a roller would keep them out but raccoons are such good little climbers I wouldn't be sure that a roller would keep them out I think more more research on that is needed I think that's all of our questions that we've got right now there aren't you in the q and a section are there more I think oh you got them all I think I got them all yeah oh there's a there's a couple no there's some in the q and a that I can answer really quickly okay um wide opossums have to be released in the same area and raccoons also california law says all wild um wildlife have to be released in the same area and the reason is because um there are a bunch of reasons actually one is because the animals uh are know of that area that's where they live that's where they're used to living it's cruel to take them somewhere else and dump them off they don't know how to live there animals can be very territorial and they can be attacked for being in an area they're not usually in there's also diseases that can be spread that way so those are just some of the reasons why wildlife have to be released in the same area um someone says wire mesh screens at crawl spaces have been torn in my area yes you need to make sure that it's welded wire mesh not not just screen not just like the screens like you have on your windows welded wire mesh is strong and will keep wildlife out um again it's something that the person who's putting it up has has to be very meticulous and careful to um put it up strongly and finally geographic range of um urban raccoons in good health um oh range i see i see what you're saying oh gosh urban raccoons really their geographic range depends upon how much food they're finding so if they're in golden gate park and they're getting fed by people who shouldn't be feeding them their geographic range is small they just go where the food is it can be up to um several acres or more or even more than that it depends in like in corn fields in the midwest where there isn't a lot of food for them one or two raccoons will take up a whole bunch of space so it's it's a hard question they're very food dependent and finally the standing raccoon that is snarling any animal that's snarling is being a little aggressive or frightened so you want to just back off and leave that animal alone and i just put in the the zoom chat a link um for anybody who is interested in identifying um a wildlife a permitted wildlife rehabilitator in a certain area in california and it's on the wildlife.ca.gov website the link is in the zoom chat um and that'll tell you where in your area you can um reach out to somebody who is permitted to take care of an animal until it can be properly re-released okay oh my gosh that's this has been so fantastic megan thank you so much thank you it's delightful to be here i want to say i agree we are lucky to live with urban wildlife a very particular kind of wildlife that sort of i don't know they tolerate us i tell you they tolerate us and we have such a responsibility the things we do just making them more vulnerable it it i i like the the perspective of doing the things that we can do to make them less vulnerable to uh to bad things happening to them and there's so much that we can do simple things um and is there anything else you want to say to everybody before we go any last words um no i the only thing i want to say is yay thank thank you to igdusil urban wildlife rescue who does so much for so many animals thank you thank you for doing it i miss you all take care and remember tomorrow we have another nature boost here it is connecting the dots mere woods hidden figures uh tomorrow 11 a.m youtube channel again and um that's all for now folks thank you so much for coming thank you so much take care and we look forward to seeing you soon at the library