We have some visitors that have set up permanent residence at our house recently. They've become rather bothersome though and we'd really like them to leave. Who are they? Well, here are some clues...
They make a lot of noise at night, when they are hard at work tearing holes in our soffits and scratching at the walls.
You may think they're cute, I used to. )Then they decided to move in.)
They are raccoons and they seem to think they own the place!
AUGHHHH!!!!! These (assuming there are more than one, not positive.) are smarter than your average Joe raccoons too. They are like stinking geniuses. They're not falling for any of our tricks intended to lure them, scare them, trap them . . . get them OUT of our attic!
Apparently this is a common thing around here, raccoons in attics. They like to live in there. It's better than the trees, obviously. There is a good possibility that it's a mother and she's taking up residence for the purpose of giving birth. FANTASTIC! I learned that raccoons love to have their babies in the shelter and warmth, protection of attics. Then the babies are raised in there. They won't leave unless forced to do so. Good news for us, right?
We store lots of things in the attic above our garage and one day a while back while John was up there organizing some stuff, he decided to open a window for a little ventilation. The window had a screen, so he never thought it would be a problem.
Well, that was until we saw the big hole that was torn/chewed in the screen and began to connect the dots to the sounds that we thought we had heard. We closed the window that day and set up some traps.
It was when we closed the window that the coons got mad. Their point of entry and exit had been closed off, so they started looking for a new one. They did that by chewing, clawing, and tearing holes in the fascia at the roof line all around our house. I mean lots of holes. We knew it was happening one night when it was outside of our bedroom. How can you not know that it's happening when an animal is remodeling your ceiling with it's teeth and claws at 2 am? We visited them several times that night, with spot lights and other items,(paint ball gun) intended to scare them away. They weren't even phased by us. We tried to scare them off and get them to stop working every few minutes and then went back to bed. It was a long night. We didn't win the war. They tore stuff up and we assessed the damage in the morning. We have a lot of stuff to fix thanks to their handy work. Good times. I'm really not lovin' raccoons anymore. NOT cute after all.
