ReNe: raccoon problems

I'm not sure if it's because of the change from a large apartment complex to a house, or because it's summer, but lately, we've been having a fair number of visitors that are not of the homo sapien persuasion. I'm talking about bugs, flies and raccoons. (All very common in Toronto, I've heard.) Mike is currently highly irritated at the first, luckily the second problem was solved by the recent cool weather, and I'm just discovering how destructive the third can be.

We're new to the raccoon problem. I've never even seen one until I heard a couple fighting outside on the fire escape a few nights back. I was washing dishes and wondering what the hell was that awful screeching noise -- I thought Mike was doing something involving tools and rubber outside. Then I popped my head out of the fire escape door to yell at him and saw a pair of furry creatures tussling on the metal stairs.

Well, the raccoons quickly ran away before I could get the camera, but it was interesting. Curious -- why would they come all the way up the fire escape to fight?

And... that could possibly explain the pee stench in the corridor carpet, which mysteriously appeared last Sunday afternoon. At first I thought our neighbor sneaked a pet in, but now I think it could be a raccoon. We've been leaving the outer doors open when we're at home because our apartment gets really warm in summer, so a raccoon could have sneaked into the corridor.

And this morning, I noticed that a couple of my potted plants, which I leave out on the fire escape to sun, were disturbed. Initially, I thought maybe someone was trying to steal a cutting, but only the soil was disturbed, as if someone was rooting around, but the plants were not pulled out. Probably an animal then.