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If you are having problems with animals in your back yard, eating your plants or vegetables or washing their food in your pool, then you may want to consider this product. We bought the Contech ScareCrow ad few years ago when we were having problems with raccoons in our yard. They were digging up grubs in the lawn and then walking over to the steps of the pool and washing these grubs off in the pool water. What a filthy mess! They were really bold, there was no scaring them off and one time a raccoon even walked across the lawn in front of us over to the pool to take a drink.  We had to do something!

This family of raccoons lived in our area for a few years. They had multiple dens in a few homes in the area and would travel from one to another.  Most people took steps to block their entrances, so they would just find another place to stay until that den got blocked as well. We tried trapping them, however they are just to smart to go into the trap. In addition the city has this bylaw that prevents you from releasing animals more than a mile from were you caught them. Now is that ridiculous or what. We had to find another solution to block these pesky critters from messing up our lawn and pool, hence the Contech ScareCrow sprinkler.

What is the Contech ScareCrow

The Contech ScareCrow is really a fancy water sprinkler that turns on only when there is something in your yard. Stick it in the ground in the same manner that you would place any standard water sprinkler. Connect a standard water hose to it and you are ready to go. It looks like a sprinkler with a motion sensor on the front of it and that is exactly what it is.

How does the Contech ScareCrow Work

The motion sensor is powered by a standard battery. Point the motion sensor at the area that you want to have protected. In our case we pointed it at the area immediately in front of the steps that enter into our pool. The sensor picks up anything that moves in front of it and when it does causes the sprinkler to start and spray water out in the direction that you have it pointed at. The water will spray for approximately 5 to 10 seconds and then reset it self.

The motion sensor can be adjusted so that it is more or less sensitive and will pick up moving objects over a wider longer area. All you need to do is to turn a dial to adjust the sensing area of the Contech ScareCrow sprinkler. Set the sensitivity for the kind or size of animal that you want to watch for. If you set the setting too high, it will trigger a lot of false positives which runs the battery down. Setting the sensor to a level for animals the size of raccoons will avoid triggering the Contech ScareCrow sprinkler for birds and extend the life of the battery.

Just like any lawn sprinkler you can also adjust the distance the water will spray and the area that it will cover. You can aim it at a very tight area or cover the entire lawn. Once you have it set up the way you want test it by walking in front of the Contech ScareCrow sprinkler on the outer edges of what you want the coverage area to be from a sensing perspective. You should get wet, but if not then you will need to make adjustments to the distance or the sensitivity of the Contech ScareCrow sprinkler.

How Well did the Contech ScareCrow Work

We had a lot of  fun with this Contech ScareCrow sprinkler.  Any time a bird would enter the area, either by flying through or landing in the area the Contech ScareCrow was pointed at, the sprinkler would turn on spraying the bird. There would be this wild squawk from the bird and it would take off in fright.

We also surprised a few of our friends and neighbors as well. People would come into our backyard to visit, see the Contech ScareCrow which was turned off as far as they could tell, until they walked into the zone that the motion sensor was observing. They squawked like the birds and came running towards us when the sprinkler suddenly turned on. What a laugh this was.

We cannot really say that we saw the raccoons frightened by this Contech ScareCrow, however we were able to stop them going into the pool to wash their worms or whatever they had.

What Else Can you do to get rid of Raccoons or Other Animals

In addition to the Contech ScareCrow there are other solutions you can consider when it comes to getting rid of animals in your yard of garden. For example you can use a humane animal trap to  trap the animals. There are several problems with this approach. One is that you may catch a skunk and getting rid of skunks is not a laughing matter. You may also catch ground hogs, rabbits, raccoons, the neighbors dog or even cats.  All of the animals need to be let out somewhere so you have to take them somewhere and let them out. Except for the neighbors pets, you will want to leave then far enough away that they cannot find their way back.

Even if you do trap these animals, it appears that there are always more animals to take their place. Especially raccoons, It turns out that there are 4 to 5 families per square mile at the minimum in urban areas and each one will have 4 or 5 dens throughout there area. So if you get rid of one group of raccoons, more will gladly come to visit and eat your grubs and vegetables.

Tags: Contech ScareCrow, Contech ScareCrow sprinkler, scarecrow, sprinkler, water sprinkler

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