Greedy raccoon's comical attempt to steal peanuts from squirrel trap

When you have bird feeders all around the property, you are bound to attract a lot of birds. But you are also likely to attract even more squirrels and chipmunks. They breed like rabbits, eat more than their share of the bird seed and peanuts, and they can be very destructive. The humane thing to do is to put out a live trap and relocate them to a suitable location a few miles away.

But bird feeders attract somebody else too. This raccoon, affectionately known as Buster, has been making frequent evening appearances in the back yard. He knows how to get the lid off the metal garbage cans that store the peanuts. he's not quiet and he's not careful, so it's always obvious when he shows up.

Raccoons are nocturnal and Buster doesn't show up in the daytime. This is an exception. He must have been craving a mid day snack and decided to make a daylight run to the feeders. He found something interesting here though, because he has never seen these traps before. They aren't set out at night. Buster discovered that there were peanuts inside and he started looking for the opening. He made such a noise rolling the trap around on the lawn and climbing on it that it wasn't difficult to catch him in the act.

With a GoPro in hand, our homeowner decided to sneak up on him and see what he was doing. Buster was able to see the peanuts but he couldn't get them. He soon learned that by rolling the trap, some would fall through the larger openings in the wire mesh. This allowed him to get one or two peanuts at a time. He was so noisy and so focused on his work that he didn't hear somebody behind him. With his nose in the trap and his bum in the air, Buster was a comical sight. He finally realized that he was being watched and made a quick dash for the trees.

Buster still comes to rob the feeders and tries to get into the storage bins almost every night, but he hasn't been seen in daylight since this episode.