Of Course You Know: This Means WAR

[bloodyrosemccoy]

When the suburb you live in is a few blocks away from a national forest, you’ve got to be prepared for some animal activity. Quail will congregate in the middle of the street, deer will eat your garden plants, and every so often rattlesnakes will decide your driveway is nice and baskable. Sometimes birds will make nests in your dryer exhaust. Sometimes skunks will vent their panic glands in your vicinity. And sometimes you will wake up to find that your beloved cat Charlotte has probably been eaten by a mountain lion.

But you take this all philosophically enough, because you may have loved your cat, but you do live next to a god damn mountain. You will give the animals fair play.

At least, until they get into your house.

Yes, our house has a varmint in the ceiling, and it has been there for weeks. Probably it’s a raccoon, although judging by the amount of noise it’s been making it could also be a moose.* We do not know how it got in, although my money’s on the chimney. We just want to figure out how it will get out. We have used a number of strategies:

-Yelling At It To Keep The Noise Down

-Exhorting The Cat To Do Her Damn Job**

-Having An Exterminator Come In And Tell Us It’s Probably A Bird, Then Say It’s Not His Job To Do Birds

-Yelling At The Varmint Some More

-Endlessly Quoting Various Lines And Catchphrases From Aliens

-Checking The Chimneys And Capping Them***

-Discovering This Did Not Work When A Varmint Misstepped And Fell Through The Eaves, Spilling Insulation Gunk All Over The Deck And Nearly Severing Our Internet Cable

… And that’s as far as we’ve gotten; Dad and I just managed to wedge the eave into place, but we’re going to have to come up with a new strategy that is not “Nuke the site from orbit.” (See? It’s hard not to make a reference.) My suggestion to bust out the Shop Vac has been vetoed, but I still think it’s a good idea. But Dad better come around fast. I’m not so sure the varmints’ next attempt to cut our internet and power will fail.


*Or a cephalopod, as I am so often reminded.

**Although given that the cat is officially a “senior” cat, perhaps she thinks she’s due for retirement.

***That one was a team effort. Dad bought the roof safety kit, scaled the ladder, managed to climb from ladder to roof despite his fake hip, roped himself to the chimney so that he would not fall the several-story drop from our side-o’-the-mountain house, checked for varmints, screwed caps onto the openings, and gingerly climbed down. Me, I held the ladder.

Comments

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

... I am now trying to work out HOW a moose could have got down your chimney ...

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

T-REX, WE WERE NOT MEANT TO BE...

Aliens is definitely the most appropriate movie for this scenario. Henceforth your name will be Hudson. Now go check those corners.

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

If it's a raccoon, you could put stinky things around the attic (ammonia-soaked rags, your cats' old litter, mothballs) or put a loud radio up there (might not be optimal if it's going to bother your family as well) or bright lights (flashing optional but might work better?). Mind that you leave the escape hole(s) open for a while, though, in case there's already a litter - that way the female can relocate them herself. Cayenne pepper sprinkled around makes a good repellent once they're gone.

Disclaimer: this is all theoretical and hearsay, as I have never had to deal with this kind of problem myself. XD;;;

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Even Squirrels can make an astonishing amount of noise when they get in the walls.

I also can never hear of anything like this without starting to think "On 16 July 1923, I moved into Exham Priory after the last workman had finished his labours. The restoration had been a stupendous task, for little had remained of the deserted pile but a shell-like ruin; yet because it had been the seat of my ancestors, I let no expense deter me..." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rats_in_the_Walls)

[shadesofmauve]

Oh, I have such varmint-in-house stories!

My grandfather actually used the shop-vac. On a bat.

This was the end of a long train of techniques only my grandfather would consider.

First he left windows and doors open and hoped.

Then, he built a chute out of cardboard from where the bat was on the ceiling to the door, yards away, and played loud music at it.

The bat did not mind loud music, but it was averse to cardboard chutes.

After several other attempts, he tried the shop-vac. With the crevice tool. He thought that the crevice tool was narrow enough that the bat would be -stuck- to the end by the suction (apparently suffering nothing more than a whole-body-hicky). Bats, however, are slight creatures. It went FOOMPFF! into the shop-vac.

He took it outside and up-ended the vac, and out staggered a confused but apparently unharmed back.

For our next episode, my father and the squirrel vendetta!

[mooncat75.livejournal.com]

If it IS a raccoon you certainly don't want your cat going after it. Raccoons are often cute, intelligent, and VICIOUS, an angry raccoon can take down a large rottie or mastiff easily.

Cayenne pepper can work.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

True! Operation Send The Cat was back when we thought it was rats or perhaps a lost bird. She probably already knew it was a raccoon.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

... thank you ever so much for making that previously unconsidered connection in my head. *eyes ceiling* Y'see, we've got a varmint too, and now whenever it wakes me up in the middle of the night, I'll be thinking terrible things and calling for my brave cat.

Fortunately we live in a suburban house. With no basement.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Raccoons are little bastards. There's one in our area that keeps teasing the dog at night. It comes right up on the deck and just watches him while he goes nuts from the other side of the glass door. (He's a miniature dachshund. While he believes firmly that he is a large and ferocious hunter, the encounter could only end very, very badly for him. Luckily, the raccoon seems to regard him as too annoying to beat up, and has never been on the deck when he's actually outside.)

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Ahahahahahaha A+ reference

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

You don't have to be near a national forest for that sort of thing. We get skunks, raccoons, and possums out here. The raccoons in particular get huge and act like they own the world.

When I was little, raccoons would sometimes sneak into our house at night, steal the cat's dry food, and wash it off in the toilet. There's nothing like waking up in the middle of the night, walking out into the hall, and being confronted with a raccoon the size of a Saint Bernard looking at you with an expression like "Yeah, what's your problem?". Or, for that matter, sitting on a toilet seat in the dark and being met with a ring of dissolved cat food.

They use the storm drains as highways. It's amazing how much raccoon flesh can fit through one of those openings.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

When I got into Lovecraft, my room was in the basement. After I read The Lurking Fear, I slept upstairs on the couch with the light on for the next three nights.

So in other words, yeah, I get your reaction. Sorry, dude.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Ouch. I hope there weren't any thunderstorms during that time period.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I hope there weren't any thunderstorms during that time period.

Fortunately*, we don't get many thunderstorms around here.

*In that case. In general, I wish we did have more thunderstorms; I rather like them.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I enjoy thunderstorms myself, but in the situation, yeah, total nightmare material.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

No matter how creepy, that story fails to really keep me in it because every time he mentions the cat I'm jarred into thinking "He named it WHAT?"

The fact that it's named after one of Lovecraft's own cats just makes it that much weirder.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

The same way Santa Claus does!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

GAME OVER MAN WE'RE FUCKED OH MAN THEY'RE COMING OUT OF THE GOD DAMN WALLS IT CAN'T BE MAN THAT'S IN THE ROOM.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

AHAHAHA I am a genius! (Okay, I got the idea from an MST3k sketch in which Crow used the Varmint Vac to get rid of some prairie dogs on the SOL, so perhaps it doesn't come with the recommendation of real experts.)

Darn squirrels. They can get you every time.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

True--raccoons are the kind of animal that seem to have evolved in anticipation of urban environments.

... Come to think of it, I've even heard stories of urban mountain lions. They are far less frequent than the mountainy kind, though.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

And also: I knew they ate cat food, but washing it in the toilet? GAH. (Did they lift the lids to get at the water?)

And now you must hear of squirrels...

[shadesofmauve]

My father is normally a very level-headed guy.

That kind of disappeared when we got a squirrel infestation in the part of our house he had just spent two years building.

Mom and I came home one day to find him outside, up a ladder, where there were two gnawed squirrel holes in the wall. He was jabbing into one hole with an unbent coat-hanger, and when the squirrel would poke it's head out the other one and growl at him (the growl!), he'd try to grab it with barbecue tongs.

Even after we made him go inside, he was muttering about how he 'almost had him' and maybe if he insulated the handle of the tongs, he could run a current through it and electrify them.

A few days later he saw the squirrel leave the roof, and he grabbed the object nearest the door and chased it up the holly tree.

The object nearest the door was my little brother's wooden toy sword.

[mel-redcap.livejournal.com]

Man, your exterminator just guessed it was a bird and didn't even check? Wow. He wasn't interested in getting paid, was he?

Either that or he knew it was a raccoon and feared it. :3

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Becoming a Lovecraft and Robert Howard fan has certainly required me to develop a sort of "it was a product of it's time" filter.

Both of them improved in that regard later in their lives, but their earlier stuff...

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

We usually left the main lid up and the seat down (mom's orders).

I wouldn't be surprised if they did lift lids, though. They open garbage can lids to get at all the nice juicy trash (and toss it all over the place).

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Occasionally a mountain lion will show up around here. It usually does not end well for the cat, though, unfortunately.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I am totally willing to believe they would figure out the complexities of toilet lids.

I always close the lid on account of aerosolization, because I am neurotic.

Re: And now you must hear of squirrels...

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Now I'm imagining this like the gopher from Caddyshack.