A Tale of the Bushy Tailed Critter

Imagine...you are sleeping soundly next to your special someone when all of sudden you hear scratching and crawling around in your room. It sounds as if there is a critter struggling to get free from something inside your walls. Welcome to last night for Joel and I.

About 11:15 Joel and I awoke with a start to a wierd scratching noise. I jumped out of bed and attempted to track the sound with my keen sense of hearing. I deducted the noise was coming from about our window alcove. The first thought I had, rats in the attic. Ew, gross. We have all our extra clothes and furniture up there and all I could think of was rat droppings and other bodily fluids strewn about the place. Insulation soaked with yuckies and baby rats pawing around blindly. All that in about 3.5 seconds of bleary eyed frantic-ness.

Joel insisted it sounded too large to be rats and he proceeded to load his .22 rifle and get his shoes on to make the trek upstairs. Flashlight in hand I heard him creak up the attic steps and bang away randomly and move all the extra doors and furniture we have stored up there. Meanwhile, I could still hear the scratch-scratch-scratching of the elusive critter. After what seemed like forever he came down and said the words I was hoping for, "It's not up there." Thank goodness for brave husbands.

Joel was determined to find our intruder so he climbed out the front window onto our roof and just then the little critter made his exit from above our window. The little guy was a few seconds too late in getting away, Joel had climbed the roof (our very STEEP roof) just in time to catch site of the raccoon and get one shot at him (sadly for the raccoon - in the butt - memory flash of the bear in the movie The Great Outdoors.) Joel knocked on our bedroom window and I opened it to the sound of our little raccoon friend barking angrily at Joel. Apparently there is just enough of a gap into the eaves about our bedroom window to allow a large cat-sized raccoon in to make a home. Yikes!

So after some deliberation about what to do, Joel went to the garage to fashion something to help get the raccoon out. He came back some minutes later with the coolest imitation dog-catcher pole I've ever seen. Have you ever seen Red Green's Handyman Corner? Yeah, just like that. Weed-whacker wire duct taped to a painting extension pole. It was absolutely beautiful. (Full appreciation of the beauty may not be possible while fully awake and not raccoon-panicked.)

Just as Joel was exiting the window to test out the pole he saw the reflection of two little pairs of eyes in the trees behind the house. The raccoon was calling his posse. So Joel shot a few warning shots out the window and successfully scared them off (possibly shooting them in the process but he assured me a .22 will hardly break the skin of a raccoon from any sort of distance.) My frantic night time thoughts at this point took me to the movie I Am Legend. The raccoon was calling his rabid crazy friends to avenge his injuries and attack our house. I quickly laid that one to rest. Silliness.

Joel was finally able to wrangle the raccoon out of his hiding hole by prodding around into the alcove. The raccoon raced across the roof will Joel hot on it's tail. The raccoon jumped off the first eave of the house, fell onto the second and then rolled into the front yard. He was not happy.

So that was our adventure from about 11:15pm until 1:15am. For those of you wondering: 1) I don't usually advocate any shooting of animals, but he was a nuisance and was trying to invade my home. 2) The bullets Joel was using were actually a "quiet" variety and made less noise than a cap-gun so I am pretty sure that our neighbors don't hate us. And 3) We have successfully blocked the access points so the raccoons can find another home and stay perfectly safe from any harm.