City dwellers know all too well how pesky raccoons can be, and a fed-up Burnaby resident wants the city to do something about the little bandits that are destroying her lawn.
Linda Cappelletti lives in a cul-de-sac near Halifax Street. For more than a year she’s been attempting to regrow her lawn while the neighbourhood raccoons have been tearing it up looking for food.
“You wake up in the morning and you’ll be amazed at what you find,” Cappelletti said. “I was almost in tears, I could not believe what they did to my grass.”
Cappelletti put down new sod in her backyard this summer and almost immediately the raccoons were digging it up. In fact, it was so fresh the animals were able to roll the sod up off the ground and get right into the dirt.
To discourage the raccoons from digging into her lawn looking for food, she’s put downmesh wire to try and protect the new grass.
“I basically had to cover the whole back area where I had the sod put in because I wouldn’t have had any sod left, that’s how bad it got,” she said.
The raccoons aren’t picky about whose lawn they chow into. Drive down Halifax Street or Kensington Avenue and it’s easy to spot where the critters have been.
Most yards on Halifax Street are torn up and scavenged through.
But it’s not just private property that’s being targeted by the raccoons. City boulevards that run in front of private residences are also torn up, and Cappelletti is shocked Burnaby isn’t interested in dealing with the mess.
“They have done so much destruction in Burnaby, it’s just incredible how much they have destroyed,” she said. “Just drive your car down a block, Kensington, Halifax, you notice that every so often there’s grass that’s completely destroyed.”
Cappelletti contacted the city last week but was told the problem was out of their control and to speak with pest control or the Burnaby-based Wildlife Rescue Association.
Janelle VanderBeek, the care centre coordinator at the Wildlife Rescue Association, said they often get calls about troublesome raccoons but there’s not much they can do about them.
“There are deterrents that we can suggest to people, but it is a natural behaviour. It’s not something that we like to deter really,” VanderBeek told the NOW.
When the raccoons are digging into lawns, they’re looking for bugs to eat, and quite often the grub they’re after are the European chafer beetles – a relatively new turf pest, which were first reported in New Westminster in 2001.
“It’s quite possible there’s a population of that certain type of grub living underneath that person’s lawn and the raccoons are actually, quite likely, serving as a population control eating the grubs,” VanderBeek said.
Without the raccoons eating the beetles, VanderBeek said the beetles would likely destroy Cappelletti’s lawn.
“With some raccoons, that is their main dietary item, which in comparison to (raccoons) going through your trash and making a mess, it’s kind of a win-lose situation,” she added.
Trapping them isn’t an option because more often than not, raccoons that are trapped and released die because they can’t adapt fast enough to their new environments, according to the Wildlife Rescue Association.
Whatever the solution, Cappelletti wants the city to do something.
The City of Burnaby did not return calls from the NOW.
Information pertaining to problems caused by European chafer beetles can be found on the City of Burnaby’s website. The site lists several tips for getting rid of or reducing their presence, including nematode application, lawn alternatives, and Let it Grow, Naturally (the City of Burnaby’s pesticide use and control program).
For more information on the European chafer, visit tinyurl.com/EuroChafer.
