Are you smarter than a raccoon?

Even though we don't have pets, I like to think that we're animal friendly.  We've planted all kinds of butterfly and hummingbird-friendly plants in the back yard, and the kids love it when neighborhood cats wander inside.  We even welcome nocturnal visitors; we've had raccoons humping in our back yard (I even have the photos somewhere, but out of respect to the raccoons, I'm not posting them. Hey, they're raccoons, not Paris Hilton), and Alfie swears he saw a wild pig in our back yard one night.

But my hospitality reached its limit when some raccoons decided to turn our garbage cans into their own personal fastfood drive-thru.  They've been attacking our trash cans almost every night for the past week.  Shutting the lids tight doesn't do any good; they just knock our trash can over and their dinner comes spilling out.  They don't even care how loud they party anymore; Alfie and I have been woken up to the sound of falling trash cans and ripping plastic.  Making noise shoos them away for the moment, but they just come back again.

So I decided it was time to take some drastic measures.  A few days ago we had roast chicken for dinner.  I packed the bones and leftover meat back into the plastic case, along with a little surprise for the raccoons:  half a cup of Windex.  Yes, add raccoon killer to my list of accomplishments.

Early the next morning, Alfie and I heard the now-familiar noise of raccoons knocking over the trash can.  This is it, I thought, the final night.  I waited for the noise to die down, then went outside.  Sure enough, the trash had been mauled and the chicken was strewn out on our driveway -- untouched.  Raccoons, you have met your match.   I decided to leave the poisoned chicken out as a warning to other would-be thieves, and for good measure I poured a bit of bleach onto the chicken.  Lucrezia Borgia is an amateur compared to me!

The next morning, all traces of the chicken had gone.  Vanished completely.  Safeway must make really good chicken because even bleach and Windex weren't enough to turn the raccoons off.  Our trash can stayed untouched for the next few days, but a few days later the raccoons were at it again. Did that raccoon have the strongest stomach in the world or did another generation come to take his place?  Who knows.  All I know is that I'm out of ideas. 

Score: Raccoons 1, Bonggamom 0.  If anyone knows of any way to even the score, I could sure use some help.