Early last month I discovered raccoons in my chimney.  Though I was surprised to see them, it wasn’t a shock that they were there.  I’ve seen raccoons around my yard many times in the past and I’ve been negligent about putting a chimney cap on the old brick chimney so the fact that they finally moved in is more of a wake-up call than anything else.  Of course at first I didn’t know it was raccoons, truthfully I thought that a bird had nested in the chimney because I would only hear soft peeps from the babies and the occasional clunk from the mother.

After a few weeks, though, it seemed odd to me that I was still hearing these sounds and they were only getting louder.  I had thought for sure that the baby birds would have moved out of the nest by now so I set my old, rickety ladder up against the wall and climbed up to the chimney to investigate the sounds I had been hearing.  Well, when I shined my flashlight down the chimney I can assure you that I wasn’t prepared to see two big reflecting eyes staring back up at me.  That was where the surprise came in you see.  I had thought a little bird was living there but in fact it was a raccoon in my chimney!

That’s when I started calling around for help, at my age I wasn’t going to get that big raccoon out of my chimney by myself, and I was almost positive that she had young living in there as well. I soon discovered that she did in fact have young, six of them to be exact.  Last night while I was letting my Yorkie out to the bathroom, I watched the mother raccoon jump out of the chimney and run down my tree.  I was just too curious not to go look down the chimney again to look for babies.  When I did I was greeted by lots of small growls and 12 eyes frozen under my light.  Well, now I really need help.  I’ve got someone coming to do an inspection tomorrow so hopefully they can get these little rascals out of my chimney for good.