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My Monorail is Full of Raccoons
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ก.ค. 2020
- When you have a rustic countryside cabin, even one that's made from a surplus zoo monorail, keeping the raccoons out is a constant battle! In this video I get down and dirty with the crawlspace under the train, meet a tiny salamander, and hopefully prevent furry trash bandits from getting their naughty little hands all over the interior!
That looks like a pretty cool project. As for keeping critters out, I read the comments and most had the right ideas. My suggestion would be , rather than try to fill all those racoon sized holes under each car (they can get through SUPPRISINGLY tight spots), you should cut back all the weeds and tall grass at the base of the monorail cars and surround the entire thing with chicken wire. Burry it a few inches in the ground even and attach it to the base of the cars. That's gonna be the only way to really keep them out. No more zip ties, like somebody else suggested use tie wire, much more effective as zippy's get brittle in the cold and racoons can chew through them. Good luck with your monorail/cabin project, and I look forward to more rail exploration with your electric rail cart, THAT thing is cool.
Keep the weeds cut back from the base, excavate out a little bit under each side and fill most of the gap below with cinder blocks. Can even frame in an access door if you're feeling fancy.
I was involved in a restoration project, years and years ago, of a 18m satellite dish (one of the very early ones) at a Canadian government research site. When we opened the door to the place (hadn't been used in 25 years), we found the mortal remains of a juvenile raccoon that had gotten caught up in the electronics and wiring. We decided to call him "sparky"... Now involved in a *different* satellite dish restoration project--no raccoons in this one!
Those things get everywhere! Last year I had to chase one out of my boat, hopefully it's a little cleaner this year!
If your hand fits, it's a raccoon-sized hole. If a pencil fits, it's a mouse-sized hole.
"we all participate in maintenance and upkeep" is a bit generous!
Wild to think I've probably ridden in that thing more than once. They were pretty neat in the late 70's :)
*Ah man.. we're so loveable, it's the filthy mice you need to keep out.*
You are fortunate to have friends who you can trust and who participate and support these unique and very entertaining ideas and adventures!
Have you tried placing some of those good 'ol plastic owls for keeping varmints away?🤔
Thanks for sharing your projects with us 🇺🇸. Aside from the current political issues, it looks like the Minnesota/Wisconsin area isn't a bad place to live.👍
I'm not sure how well those owls work, I've seen pigeons roosting on them in town! We have some foxes living in the area, maybe those will eat some of the racoons!
That would make a cool vehicle to drive around in ! All you need is a rolling chassis and drive train ( pardon the pun ) that would be sweet ! Get yourself a propane air-conditioner and mount on the roof or better yet make one from a propane fridge ! Can you imagine the looks you’d get driving a monorail truck ! And plenty of room for your friends ! Lol
It kinda looks like a space shuttle from Star Trek !
you could turn the drivers cab into a actualy green house for some indoor house plants maybe even some tropical plants like a monstera etc ...
It does get pretty hot in there! I'd have to make sure the racoons don't eat it.
Good idea with the child locks on the maintenance doors!
Only you could create such a title! :-D
Well, I don't have a hovercraft full of eels yet, so this is the best I can do :-D
Spotted Cow spotted
Pro-tip: any hole is a raccoon sized hole.
The only way to keep critters out of any structure is live in followed by keeping the weeds etc from growing around your structure. Remember Raccoons are like Hamsters, Rats, Ferrets, which means any little hole you think a coon can't get through they can. Save yourself some money and buy a spool of "tie wire" (you can buy a spool of it at Harbor Freight for less than 10 bucks and when tying in chicken or rat wire it works much better, and coons, opossums, and other critters cannot chew though them and the cold won't make them brittle and cause them to break. Additionally you should think about laying down some lime and tar paper under the monorail and investigate measures to keep bug, salamander, and other sources of food for mice, rats, coons, possums, and any other critter other than human home in, around, and under, your monorail. You might want to consider some "old time" type/styles of vermin deterrents/elimination
You should cut some of that metal and copper piping and recycle it for some $$to help with improvements
I'd be costly, however, if you placed the monorail on a raised track again, you'd only have to place barriers on the supports.
I heartily recommend you check out Shawn Woods' TH-cam channel. It's all about mice and critter control.
Make up several bucket mouse traps and keep 'em in the monorail cars. In the winter I use windshield washer fluid instead of water to keep it from freezing. You'll see what I mean.
As others have said you'll want to clear out and dig down around the whole unit eventually and put in some concrete foundation forms to really seal up the base. In a perfect world you would have a foundation poured and ready before you brought in the monorail cars but of course that would dent the budget significantly.
I've done bucket traps in other places, they work best if someone's there to empty them regularly. Otherwise they start to smell and attract bigger pests (back home it was bears, here it's raccoons).
Ahh, gotcha. I'm new to your channel so I'm not familiar with your setup or how often you're there.
Was about to suggest the same channel! Hell, maybe send the guy a message he might be able to help!
Nice monorail man! I know people who own locomotives but not monorails!
Is that a deck mounted potato launcher?
Yep! There's also a wheeled version under the tarp 😂
Which zoo did you get the monorail from? Is this a Bombardier model? It's looks a lot simpler than ours. Where are your motors?
This one was from the Minnesota Zoo. I have some history on my website saveitforparts.com. It's a "Universal Mobility" model, but has some family relation to Bombardier. The motors were pulled out to save weight so we could load and transport it ourselves.
@@saveitforparts Universal Mobility is the same company that provided service for Miami MetroZoo , Now Zoo Miami, Monorail.
Yep, the Miami zoo monorail is nearly identical to this one. I think it just shut down, I'm not sure what they're doing with the equipment.
@@saveitforparts Don't know. But yes it did shut down a few months ago. Such a sad day.
@saveitforparts >>> You have probably finished _raccoon-proofing_ the Monorail by now, but would using _spray foam_ to fill some of those odd-shaped voids be a good alternative to chicken wire? Or would they just dig/chew through it?
They'd just chew through it and make a mess :-(
Remind slimjim to remind me and ill see if i can look at a few things next time i visit. The tree rats i can confirm have annexed the tree house again as of 2/ 2022
Save Jimmy
Epic
Was this from the Toronto Zoo? How on earth did you aquire it??
It's from the Minnesota Zoo. I called them up and made an offer, and they went for it! I hear Miami zoo has the same model and has also closed theirs, so might be another one up for grabs!
You could step up to 480V to power the AC system, with a transformer
We don't even have 120V unless we start up a generator :-D
So how did you get that thing in there?
The monorail? We hauled it from the zoo one car at a time, and hired a crane to unload them and line them up! I have a video / slide show around here somewhere with some of the details.
Here's the background video, this was one of the first "channel" videos I did so I hadn't yet discovered emotions :-P th-cam.com/video/kN0wriEv_CI/w-d-xo.html
Keep mice out , steel wool/plaster and lots of it