Raccoon Control

I thought we just needed to get the water leak fixed, but I had no idea that would mean getting raccoon control specialists out to our house first.

I can’t believe we didn’t notice the wild animal living in our attic.  I suppose it went in and out while we were sleeping, or when the television was on, or when our family was just loudly playing games together or talking or fighting.  For whatever reason, we didn’t notice we needed raccoon control until after I noticed the water leak damage.

This spring, when it really started raining, I would sometimes hear the sound of water dripping in the middle of the night.  It drove me crazy, because I’d get up to investigate, but found nothing.  I stumbled around, in the dark house, fumbling from bathroom to bathroom and checking all the faucets and listening to the toilet, but never did find the source of the dripping noise.  Come to think of it, I would sometimes hear a rustling in the middle of the night, but I assumed it was our cat playing somewhere else in the house.  It must have been the raccoon.  I hate to think of that animal living in our home and all the nasty little bugs it brought in with it.

When the obnoxious dripping noise ended up as a slightly sagging ceiling in the upstairs hallway, we finally thought to investigate the attic area.  We grabbed a small ladder, pushed up the small piece of painted drywall separating our upstairs ceiling from the attic space, and my husband climbed on up.  He waited at the top of the ladder, the upper half of his body in the ceiling, to let his eyes adjust to the dim lighting conditions.  I handed him a flashlight, and he brought it up, clicked it on, and turned slightly.  Then, he gasped and told me there was a huge hole through which he could see sky, and that there was a raccoon growling at him from the other end of the attic.

Apparently, the raccoon decided to build a den out of the spring rain by tearing under some shingles, and ripping a wider hole around a pipe.  That left our house completely exposed to the raccoon’s activities, any other wild animal that cared to come in, and the weather.  We thought we’d have to get a raccoon control service as well as a roofer to come out, but it turns out that Allstate Animal Control does both – removes raccoons and repairs the damage they caused.  We had them clean out and sanitize our attic while they were at it.  What a mess.  I hate to admit it, but I was grateful we had a water leak so we could find out we needed raccoon control.

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