Raccoons
What pulls raccoons into a category all their own is not just their knack for turning over garbage cans or slipping into suburban attics with those black masked faces, but their distinct habit of building communal latrines on flat, elevated surfaces like roofs, decks, and attic beams. They are medium sized mammals that move with an arched back and leave behind a bushy tail marked with five to seven dark rings, but it is their hand like front tracks featuring five long, slender toes that truly give them away. You might catch one rummaging through your sweet corn or peeling back vinyl siding in the dead of night, looking every bit the masked bandit people always make them out to be.
Telling a raccoon apart from its neighbors usually comes down to counting toes and looking closely at the droppings or footprints left behind. While dogs, coyotes, and foxes leave tubular scat with tapered ends and four toed tracks with visible claw marks, raccoons leave blunt ended droppings filled with undigested fruit seeds or corn kernels and five toed prints that look remarkably like tiny human hands. Opossums also leave five toed tracks, but their hind feet feature a sideways pointing thumb that stands out immediately, whereas all five toes on a raccoon footprint point straight ahead. Skunks and rodents share your yard or attic space, but skunks lack the climbing skill to build rooftop latrines and rodents only ever leave four toes on their front feet.
