Catch them in the act and kill them.
My plan thus far has been tossing my meat scraps off the back porch as a bargain. I dunno that morning inconvenience is an offense worthy of death.
Raccoons are very resourceful and clever predators. The only way you are going to keep them out of your garbage cans is to use some kind of locking containers.
Raccoons will eat a dead brother, so leaving a dead one behind would be more like baiting them.
Which, suddenly brings to mind a different form of entertainment you could pursue. Kind of like making lemonade out of lemons, so to speak. How about taking that same meat offering, a fishing pole with a stout line, a heavy gauge treble hook and setting the meat into the hook, tossing it out by the cans and waiting until one grabs the bait. Then in your best fisherman style, set the hook well and reel him in. I'll bet a raccoon on a hook would put up quite a fight.
then leave the mangled carcass next to the trash for a couple of days so that the rest of them see it. ive never tried this with coons but it works well with those garbage digin bums.
Been doing that with the ants though. I have yet to see if it will be effective.
Thinking maybe I should try DD's suggestion of leaving standing water outside. My partner does not believe me that it would work.
When I mentioned my ant problem, I was referring to the type of huge harvester ants we have here in Indiana. They strip trees, cut leaves, carry the refuse underground to make a compost mold which they use to feed a colony of aphids, whose urine they eat - kind of like keeping their own herd of dairy animals.
I don't know what kind of ants you are dealing with there, but learning about their life cycle may help you to control them.
You still may end up having to resort to some pyrethrum (which is derived from some types of chrysanthemum and totally organic, but it doesn't last long), pyrethroid (similar, still fairly safe to humans, birds and mammals, but manufactured to resist photochemical breakdown over a longer exposure time) based or boric acid based compounds (still relatively safe for humans).
Worst case scenario would be the use of manmade toxins, such as Diazinon if you can find it, or Malathion. (those last two are very stinky and dangerous. In fact, manufacture of Diazinon has been banned in the USA and it was removed from many store shelves a few years ago, but some is still sold in farming markets. It was a very effective control for fireants common to the south.)
