Hoard attracting large Predators
So, my mother's hoarding extends to her yard and continuously planting fruit trees, bushes, flowers. A lot of really beautiful plants but once they are in the ground they are neglected and never maintained or trimmed. The yard is so overgrown it is unusable now. She has a greenhouse, also unusable because a grape vine got in and completely took over. The entire greenhouse is filled to the brim with grape vine to the point you cannot open the door.
My brother lives with her and hoardes cars, car parts, guns and refuses to clean trash he will remove from his vehicle and leave in the yard.
So, predictably, with so many food sources around, raccoons moved in. Several generations of raccoons. My brother has removed 7 from the property and released them 30 miles away. He has trail cams set up to monitor this. Last night, the trail cam picked up a raccoon in the live trap, with 4 other raccoons surrounding the trap, trying to free the trapped one. Heartbreaking. So about 12 raccoons, probably more. This isn't a large property, it is in a residential subdivision on a typical lot, luckily most of the jungle is hidden with trees from the road.
Also on the trail cam is a very large beautiful wild cat. A lynx or a bobcat most likely. He is prowling the yard every night.
I feel like the situation is getting out of control and someone is going to get hurt. Or my small dogs. I hate this so much because I love my family. But when I bring up cleaning up the yard a bit, removing the trash, trimming the apple and other fruit trees to make them more manageable, removing the grape vines completely (none of this fruit has ever been consumed by humans) I get screamed at.
My brother does not think they are there because of the plentiful food and just need to be eradicated. I know he wants to shoot the cat but other houses are way to close to shoot in the yard.
My mother just likes her backyard and can only see black and white- either let it grow wildly out of control or bring in the bulldozers.
It is just so frustrating. And terribly sad to see these poor raccoons, who obviously have deep connections to each other torn apart and relocated in a strange area.