Raccoon Warrior

I am at WAR with a mama raccoon.

Two weeks ago, my 10-year-old son Adam, told me and my husband that he saw a raccoon climb up our front porch post and go into our attic. (We are chronic home improvement procrastinators and still have not repaired the hole in our porch from the tornado that blew through our neighborhood last August.)

We didn't believe "Mr. Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf." Then, my eighteen-year-old son Nate told me that we definitely have some sort of MUTANT MOUSE in our attic making a ton of noise. I didn't put the two pieces of information together until a few days later when I saw the Mama Raccoon for myself.

I was walking home from the neighbor's house and as I approached the front porch, noticed a large furry rodent looking animal slowing lumbering up my post and then she disappeared into the tornado hole.

YIKES! The good news was that Adam WAS telling the truth. The bad news was I didn't believe him. Hmmm.

That night, our seventeen-year-old son Luke complained that Mama Raccoon kept him up all night clanging around in the wall next to his second story room.

I called a wildlife control expert who inspected the attic and sure enough, there was plenty of evidence that our unwanted and, might I add, FREE LOADING tenant was in fact preparing to give birth! She was nesting up there in our attic.

The wildlife guy said he would be back the next day.

Later that evening, my husband happened to be passing by our front door when he saw her big raccoon head pop out of the tornado hole. THERE SHE WAS! Then her head retreated again.

"SHHHHHHHHHH," Ron quieted me and the boys and he kept watching. After a few minutes, Mama Raccoon climbed down, meandered around our porch and then she ran under our van that was parked in the driveway.

Ron had the boys keep an eye on her while he quickly got a hammer and nails. I called the neighbors to see if they had a few scraps of plywood in their garage.

The neighbors came over with the wood. By this time ALL my boys plus the neighbor kids were monitoring the movements of Mama Raccoon.

Ron and the neighbor nailed the tornado hole shut. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!! Well, it turns out the Bush administration were not the ONLY ones to make that claim a bit prematurely.

We thought we had successfully blocked her entrance and could rest easily that she would no longer be wrecking our attic.

The next morning, I noticed a few roofing shingles on our front sidewalk. I stepped back several feet and noticed more loose shingles strewn on top of our roof. ODD, I thought.

Ron grabbed a ladder and climbed up there to find that we were dealing with one tenacious raccoon. She had torn off our roof and the plywood under-layment and made a hole large enough for her to get back in! UGH!

We currently have a cage trap set on our front porch and are hoping she will be caught and that we can evict her from our attic.

There are two valuable lessons that I have learned from this experience. 1. Do NOT put off until next Spring what you can take care of TODAY! 2. Be as determined and tenacious as a Mama Raccoon and you will go far in life.