As most people know, raccoons are some the smartest, most cunning animals in the world. Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say smart I suppose, but they are extremely determined and it takes a lot to throw them off their prize. A good example of this is what happened to me in the spring of 2012, the beginning of the summer was fairly uneventful. But once the days got hotter and longer things began to take a turn for the worst. It started with just a few mishaps. In fact, I hardly would have noticed them at all if my visiting daughter hadn’t brought it up.
It all started when my daughter came down to stay with us a few days. After the first night she came downstairs in the morning complaining about the scratching and sounds she had heard in the walls all night. I was confused, I’d never heard any sounds like that. I assured her that I would spend the night in the upstairs room to make sure that there weren’t any sounds. Well needless to say, I didn’t get a wink of sleep that night! You could hear the little buggers crawling all over the place! The first thing I did the next morning was call up a professional trapper to come take care of our problem.
Well, after thoroughly checking out our house, the coon connoisseur found several entrances that the raccoons could be using. He set up cameras that would tell us which entrances the raccoons were using so that we could get them sealed. We had to endure another couple days of those dirty fur balls running around in our walls before we could check the entrances. When the day finally came for us to unveil the secret entrances those little bandits were using I could hardly contain my excitement! I was beyond ready to get rid of this problem. When the trapper got there, we crowded around his little video camera to see what the verdict was. And you’ll never believe it…
Not a single raccoon went in or out any of the entrances that we had been surveying. We were all in awe. How did the raccoons get in the house? It wasn’t like they could just walk in the front door! We sat around and talked for a while trying to brainstorm ideas of how the raccoons were getting in. We were onto the idea of them tunneling underneath the house when we heard a large crash coming from the upstairs bedroom. We rushed up the stairs to see what had caused the commotion, and there frantically running around the room was one of the raccoons!
After several minutes of frantic screaming and chasing, we finally had the raccoon subdued. The exterminator laughed when he realized that the raccoons had been getting in through the window that my daughter opened at night. Once they had entered the house, they found their way to the attic where they begun to wreak their havoc.
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Raccoons in the Eaves
It’s time to serve an eviction notice to the raccoons in the eaves. They’re squatters. They just moved in one day, without signing any contracts, no move-in deposit, no rent for the three months they’ve lived there. Sure, we have a tree overhanging the roof, but that’s not to say we have an open-door policy. I’m about ready to get all medieval on their furry, thieving little butts.
Those raccoons climb up the tree, drop down on the roof, and have now ripped all the material, covering the eaves and some of the rain gutters, making themselves at home on top of my home. They just sit on the rain gutter or the roof, and then climb down into the eaves they’ve accessed by ripping my house apart. I’ve looked around, and it doesn’t look like they even have the decency to use some sort of raccoon out-house, so where are they going to the bathroom? Inside the walls of my house! These are the worst tenants EVER!
So, I’m imagining that, if they’re peeing and crapping in the eaves, and probably also bringing in food, they’re also attracting all kinds of bugs and flies and microscopic yuckies that then make themselves free to live in my home, too. It’s getting out of control.
Now, they’re violating noise ordinances, because they’ve started to fight. Have you heard a raccoon fight? It’s not like some kind of minor domestic dispute from upstairs neighbors. No, this is a special, growling, screeching, banging noise. These raccoons in the eaves are destroying my home, they’re probably going to make me sick, and now they’re keeping me up at night and waking me up early in the morning with their noise. They have GOT to go.
I’ve tried to evict them myself. I put out traps. I just caught squirrels. Squirrels never bothered me, so I feel bad about trapping them. But, now I’m wondering, if I get rid of the raccoons in the eaves, will squirrels just move in? Will rats or mice be attracted to whatever food the raccoons have cached away, if any?
So, not only do I need someone to trap them and remove the raccoons from the eaves, but I also want repairs to be done. Ew, and some kind of clean-up, too. I think I’d want everything cleaned out and sanitized before we closed it back up again, just so we don’t get a bug problem or mouse problem on top of raccoons in the eaves. Then, we’d need to put the siding or soffit up again and repair the rain gutters. And, we’d need to do this before the rainy season, too, because I don’t want major water damage to the house.
So much to worry about and take care of, now I’ve got to evict the raccoons in the eaves. I definitely never signed up to be a property manager for animal tenants!