I loved reading real animal-in-my-house stories like Gerald Durrell's "Animals in My Family" and Farley Mowat's "Owls in the Family". Even while venturing into the exotic "Daisy Rothchild: The Giraffe that Lived with Me" and "Born Free", I was convinced that having wildlife in my home would, when it inevitably happened, be an amazing and welcome thing. Some of those books I read several times and never tired of them. Sterling North's "Rascal" was an especially endearing tale of a young North and his boyhood chum. Any guesses? Rascal was a ..... RACCOON!
Little did I know that life with a raccoon is NOT as cute and lovely as I thought 25 years ago. Shall we begin at the beginning? Let's.
This past Friday morning at around 3:00, a shuffling, scratching, rubbing-my-body-on-the-wall sound woke me. Thinking it was Jordan (why she'd be crawling around my bedroom floor is beyond me), I called out to her. The noise stopped. Then it started again and it sounded as though it was directly under the head of our bed. Dust bunnies come to life?? A (gulp) rodent?? "Mike. MIKE. MIIIIKE. There is something in our room." Good man that he is, Mike groggily agreed that there was a noise, but that it was not likely to be IN our room. Perhaps on the roof? In the wall?
Now perched in the center of our bed - because we all know that a rodent wouldn't dare set foot in the center of the bed - wrapped in the duvet with only my face sticking out, I told him that I wouldn't be going back to sleep until he figured out what the &**! was there. This little "episode" took nearly an hour to conclude. Not a terribly good sleep had by either of us.
Friday night. 9:30. Mike was playing poker in Delta. The girls, deliciously shampooed, cuddled and in their beds. Me? Going to do some stuff on the computer. Turn on the light. Turn on the computer. Sit down and hear "THUMP" directly above my head, followed by a whole lot of scrabbling noises. I leapt out of the room, shut the door and did what any brave woman would do - called my husband. "Turn off the computer, close the door and go to bed." That was his advice. When I went back into the room, there was a medium sized ball of fur in the middle of the floor....when I stopped jumping about, I realized that it was Jordan's stuffed hedgehog. I swore I wouldn't admit to that...
On Saturday morning, Mike called me into the office to listen to the ceiling. Not rats, but definitely bigger than mice. Checking the internet, we concluded that the chirpings were that of the Northern Raccoon (Procyon lotor for those Latin fiends). We also discovered some "home remedies" for raccoons in the attic and interesting tidbits such as a list of parasites they carry and damage they're capable of doing....
Hitting the phonebook for pest removal options left me with a heavy heart, as the kits will stay with the mom until the next mating season (December!). On the upside, though, our tenants will be relocated rather than exterminated, so I don't feel too badly about having a professional take care of them for us. We are trying the home remedies and are giving them until tomorrow to find a new hotel.
In order for Mike to get the buckets of ammonia-soaked rags up into the attic and hang a trouble light up there, he had to make sure mamma raccoon was out of there (could you imagine what chaos that would be??). I stood outside taking photos of her gymnastic talents as she left through the gable and navigated the overhang.
At any rate, the kids are excited by our new buddies - Jordan loves to listen to them scuttling around when you tap the ceiling and Maya wanders around banging walls and yelling, "COOOOOON...where YOOOOOOUUUUU?" Maybe they'll get to see the babies when they're taken out.
I have to say, I will be a bit sad to see them go - just don't tell Mike!
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