Racoons and Pigeons Are Not Friends

You have waited long enough to hear the story of my lost pigeons. I added a title to the previous blog, but it was not me who ate the pigeons.
A couple of summers ago, a guy in a pigeon racing club gave me about a dozen pigeons. I would release them from their cage and they would faithfully come back. They proved to be amazing pigeons. Their flights looked somewhat like an air show. By last October they had multiplied into 30 beautiful healthy birds. All summer I had left the trap open so that they could come in when I had let them out of their cage, but could not get back out again until I let them out again(once a day).
To make a long story short, last October my youngest daughter (2 years old) wanted to hold some baby pigeons. She ran ahead of me to see them from outside the cage. When she got to the cage, she looked back at me and said, "Daddy, why are the pigeons sleeping." Not thinking anything of it, I continued to walk toward the cage. I looked inside. I saw I dead, mutilated pigeon and as I looked around it was like one of those horror flicks witht he screeching violin music. My field of view expanded to see a massacre of birds; some half eaten and all with their head chopped off and it a pile. Every one of my pigeons was dead! What a shock. The evidence was clear. A racoon(s) had gone into the trap door and had left piles of crap in the cage (I guess they had gotten their fill). I had to clean the birds up before they decomposed any more; so I quickly put them into a garbage bag. My daughter asked "Daddy, why are you putting the pigeons in the garbage?" I am sure my daughter is scarred for life.
We now have a whole new flock of pigeons... most of them white. I keep the trap door shut at night and we haven't had any such incidents since.