Every night when the outside temperature drops enough, I open one of our three garage doors to the height of 4 inches to cool the garage down during the night hours.  This particular garage door is manual open and I can real easily set this to a small opening. The other two garage doors have motor drives and I found they can not open to just  a few inches but the smallest opening is just over a foot.  I do not want any humane or animal critter getting into our garage so I only open the manual operated door.

One morning I went into our attached garage to find my Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookie box that I had just purchased from COSTCO was on the floor, partially opened, and some of the individual cookie bags pulled out, opened, and some cookies eaten.  I taped the box closed where it was torn open and put it back on the shelf after cleaning up the mess on the garage floor.   I did not take the box into the house because I already had a box of these cookies in our pantry.  I do like these cookies.  In three days the same box was moved to the front of the garage, as if the animal was trying to get the box outside of the garage.  The distance was well over 24 feet.  Not being able to get the large box out a 4 inch opened garage door, the critter then opened the box up again and more cookie bags pulled out, some eaten.  This time, I called animal control and was told the following:

• Probably a Opossum.
• Place the Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookie box in a safe place and keep all food items out of our garage.
• Purchase coyote urine and spray it around the garage door outside should keep opossums out.
• Do not trap the critter.  To do so, requires a license.
• You can call a licensed trapper to come to remove the animal.

I went to the local feed store and purchased a 8 oz spray container of  Bare Ground Coyote Urine and sprayed some on the outside corners of the garage door and along it’s full opening just in front of the door on the cement.  I was told by the feed store employees to reapply the urine spray if the area that is sprayed gets wet from dew or rain.

I then placed the box of Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies into our pantry.  We still store quite a bit of packaged food items on higher shelving in the garage.

I then texted some selected friends what happened and what I did to resolve the issue and received some really playful replies.