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

[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.

[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.

[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]

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?)

[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).

[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.