Raccoons Evicted!

If you know me than you also know that for approximately the past 2 years I have had some unwelcome tenants in my house on and off. These tenants are not family members or even friends, but raccoons. A while ago, one of these little opposable thumb havin' buggers figured out that he could bend the slats apart on the roof vent that allows air circulation through the eaves of the house. He also learned that he could climb in through this opening and have a warm dry place to hang out.

This little dude must have shared this info with his friends, because since we trapped him and dropped him off at a local park (hopefully far enough away), we've had to trap other raccoons that decided to try out the accommodations over my 2nd floor bedroom ceiling. They come and go and each time they decide to leave I breathe a sigh of relief.

So why not just close the vent up? Good question. The main electricity hook up enters right near the vent opening and nobody we have called wanted to fool around near the LIPA hookup while 25 feet in the air on a (probably very conducive to electricity) ladder.

This last time was the straw... I'd had enough! Every morning at 5:30 am the thing would make all sorts of noise over my head. A few times it sounded like it was about to dig through the sheet rock ceiling. I was getting ready to try closing up the hole myself, electricity or not! My Dad came up with a better idea. We could cut a hole in the ceiling of the second level. We decided to do this in a closet so we wouldn't make the house look like too much of a wreck. I was elected to climb up in there and close up the hole from the inside by screwing a wire grating into the surrounding vent frame. Simple... right? Easier said than done is more like it.

Here's how it went... First I drew some lines on the closet ceiling to try to make a somewhat neat cut in the sheetrock. I grabbed a sheetrock saw and started cutting. Got all 4 sides done and lifted the cut section out and down. I had one of those masks over my face and my safety glasses on. That sheetrock dust makes a big mess. Anyway, I pushed back the insulation and suck my head through the opening, three D-Cell Maglite in hand, and looked for any remaining critters. It was like that scene in Aliens. Luckily, nobody was home. They must have bugged out when I started cutting through the ceiling. I say "they" because I could hear two of them moving around up there the night before.

The first thing I noticed when I got up there was the smell of animal. I am lucky that the smell never made it down into the bedroom. The second thing I noticed was just how little space there would be to move around up there. The third thing I noticed was a pile of raccoon poop about 2 stud sections away from where we cut through. I could see this after I set up the work light.

I now had to drag myself about 20 feet across the studs carrying a screw gun, screws, the wire grating, a wire cutter, a flashlight and a walkie talkie (gotta have one of those... this was a serious mission after all). Once I made to the end of the house, I had to cut the wire grating to fit. Then I had to contort myself in every which way in order to screw it down. I crawled back without turning myself around... that was tough. Avoiding the pile of nasty was a top priority. We had planned on putting up some bug screening as well, but I didn't really feel too hot about going back in there. I went back with the screening and a staple gun only to find out that the piece of screening was too small to do its job. I stapled it up anyway just on principle.

Then it was time for the nasty... I had to clean up the pile of coon waste. This was gross. I used my Dad's German army surplus entrenching tool as a shovel and scooped it into a bag. We got rid of the bag, put an air freshener up there and closed up the hole.

So the next night I come back from my company Holiday party to find that the little buggers have tried to get in through the other vent at the other side of the roof. The next day I closed this section off with wire screening from the outside after I made sure nothing was in there. Haven't heard a peep from up there since.

Whew... what an experience. Good thing I ain't claustrophobic. Those little guys are cute, but that cuteness only goes so far when they wake you up every day for a month straight at 5:00 am.

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