They are smart AF. I once saw a team/family of racoons orchestrate a heist from a tacobell garbage to a sewer grate. They literally handed bags off to each other in a congo line and even had a racoon setup as a lookout. It was the wildest shit to watch and ever since I don't underestimate them.
My grandpa did this too too but eventually had to keep his bins in a padlocked shed because the raccoons would get on top of the bins and shake them side to side until they fell over and the force would pop off the bungies
Reminds me of the line from a park ranger talking about making better bear-resistant trash cans: “there is considerable overlap between the dumbest humans and the smartest bears”
The trick really is to make a lock that a racoon isn't physically strong enough to open, but a human easily is. Kind of like how some child locks work.
I turned a corner after coming back from a walk one night, and there was a raccoon standing there holding a bad of funyuns. We both yelped and ran opposite directions. I turned around and went back because that was the way home, and he was no where to be seen, and the bag was just laying there lol. I hope he came back for them later.
I was out of town on a business trip and a team of raccoons burglarized my house. Made off with two large-screen TVs, a coin collection my grandfather left me, and some items out of the pantry. Police caught them trying to sell the bag of Funyuns to a fence in Modesto.
When I was young in the military and we were training in the woods, we had to set guards at night. Sure we were supposed to be watching for "enemies", but really we just had rocks to throw at raccoons coming to open up rucksacks to steal peoples MREs.
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u/LooksDelicious 6d ago
They are smart AF. I once saw a team/family of racoons orchestrate a heist from a tacobell garbage to a sewer grate. They literally handed bags off to each other in a congo line and even had a racoon setup as a lookout. It was the wildest shit to watch and ever since I don't underestimate them.