Racoon has me questioning myself.

I have had a garden for two years and have always had this raccoon pestering me. He would eat my crops and come back every night for more.

Eventually I started spending nights periodically checking on my garden for 10-15 minutes at a time every hour or so to hopefully keep the coon at bay. That seemed to keep him away for a few months.

But lately he has been coming out of the sewer while I'm out there, and even walking within feet of me. I started entertaining myself with the coon. I let him get close to me or my garden and I suddenly jump up and scare him and even chase him back into the sewer. I did this for a while all in good fun and with purpose. He started to come out all the time when I was out, as if he was expecting me. And he kept doing the same things, trying to get a bite of my bounty, seeing if I would do anything.

I took it light heartedly for the longest time, just fooling with the coon. He even became a friend in a weird way. But one day I got so fed up and instead of merely chasing him back to the sewer, I grabbed rocks and chased him to the sewer. I threw the rocks into the sewer hoping he'd die from it. Ever since then I've gone out with the intention that if I ever saw him come out of the sewer, I'd kill him. I've tried many times to kill the coon.

But every time after I try to kill the coon, I feel terrible. He came around every day and he was a recurring figure in my life for a very long time. He was the only thing I could expect to see every day. Should I feel so bad about wanting to kill this animal that is stealing my food? I feel i don't just want to kill him to protect my crops, but I want to kill him for personal reasons. I feel that is messed up, is it?

I can see what you mean by hating it, but it becoming so close to you in a weird way that killing, and therefor never seeing it again would leave you feeling like you've lost a small part of your life...

It almost sounds like a start of some movie actually, like the guy who tried to chase it off adopts it or something lol, dunno which film I'm thinking of.

Is there some way you could perhaps lure it into some cat carry box (like this one: http://www.cuddleton.com/images/adoptin ... 1_1265.jpg) with some food (like fruit or nuts), lock the door, then call some animal protection society that deals with uncommon animals (what ever that would be) to come pick it up with their own box (by luring it into the other box with both connected)?

I guess it is a bit messed up to want to kill it, but I can see how it became personal after it has been bothering you for so long, so I guess it's justified in that regard. Still, you won't feel bad if you can get rid of it without killing it, then you won't have to worry about it anymore.

Alternatively you could use some repellent, found this online: http://www.stepin2mygreenworld.com/wp-c ... lents-.png

So you could do that every 5 days and eventually it'll lose interest and move elsewhere for food.