I think every home must have a story that the inhabitants, if asked, would say was the most memorable thing about the house. In our case, it might be the raccoons.
\nTwo…maybe three summers ago, I hired two handymen to do some outside work on the house. I needed to have the dormer over the front door repainted, and I wanted to have a gutter repaired.
\nWell, Dear Husband came home and found them at work, and I had to admit that I had hired some help. A few days later, it rained, and it became apparent that we now had a leak in the roof….perhaps in the location of where one of the men had been standing, and the gutter could still be improved.
\nDH went out to the front of the house, and ripped out the soffit, announcing that we would leave it open to determine where the leak was.
\nA year later, a lady raccoon found the open soffit, and discovered that she could make a nest between the brick wall and the drywall in my mother’s sitting room. That spring we could hear her babies calling for their dinner. When she scritched her fleas, her feet would thump against the walls. We could hear her run across the roof. Later that summer, we took up viewing posts in the dining room, and watched the acrobatics as she left the wall, and curled up onto the roof. She used the valleys of the roof as her personal highways, and taught her children to follow her.
\nI assume that she hibernated in the wall that winter. We talked about the need to lure her out and close the soffit. I probably talked about that a LOT as she chewed her way through the rigid insulation, and began pulling out yards of fiberglass insulation. Each morning I would look out the front door and find wads of it festooning the newly emerging perennials in the sidewalk garden.
\nThen, we realized we had TWO female raccoons….two PREGNANT raccoons.
\nDEAR HUSBAND….we NEED to CLOSE the SOFFIT! DH would nod his head in agreement.
\nSo….the raccoons found their way into the attic. One night, I was sitting in the “green room.” That’s the area off the kitchen where we have shelves of plants, and it’s where we eat informal dinners. Over my head there was an incredible fight, with high pitched screaming and thuds. The raccoons were establishing pecking order, and territory. Evidently one took the corner over our closet, and one found a nook at the edge of the great room, and they must have divvied up the green room as a straightaway to the exit. Their choices were astonishing! They instinctively chose places where we couldn’t get to them.
\nA month or two later, we could hear the babies trying to scramble up the slope of the cathedral ceiling over the great room. Those little suckers were cute little balls of fur….but I wanted them OUT of my house!
\nDear Husband heard about it regularly, as the raccoons pulled more and more insulation out of the house. It was a warm summer, and the attic is hot, despite the fan and the vents. Every now and then I’d catch the raccoons snoozing near the opening of the soffit……a foot hanging over the side, and gentle snoring competing with the bees.
\nSo…last month, DH finally cut a temporary patch for the soffit. We were agreed that the babies were old enough now to survive outside. We felt it was necessary to give them adequate time to find another home before winter set in.
\nI know you wonder why I didn’t just call an exterminator. I did. Actually, I called a “trapper.” I didn’t want to kill these animals. Their habitat has been eaten up inexorably. Houses have marched across the fields and into the groves that were their home, and we had one of the few places left that seemed a refuge. I didn’t expect them to become our dependents. At any rate, the “trapper” wanted $50 to visit and scope out the situation. Then, he wanted $35 a piece for each raccoon he caught. AND…..he would have to kill them once he caught them. We figured there were nine of them. The money wasn’t the issue. Killing the babies was.
\nMy soft-heartedness came to an end when we started hearing stories about how dangerous they were to both pets and human health. It was time for them to go.
\nIt’s quiet above me tonight. The soffit will have to be opened so that insulation can be blown into the attic, and we’ll have to paint, and clean. I’m glad they are outside where they belong, but I miss them.
\nIt was the right thing to do, if only to give Dear Husband a little peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think every home must have a story that the inhabitants, if asked, would say was the most memorable thing about the house. In our case, it might be the raccoons. Two…maybe three summers ago, I hired two handymen to … Continue reading