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.

[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.

[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