Roger the Lodger in the attic

[Clutch Munny]

Kids have been hearing rustling and scraping in the attic for a few weeks, so I finally cleared out the closet where the access door is and went up there two days ago.

There are two kinds of insulation up there: pink fiberglass (itchy but easy to negotiate) and some sort of grippy fluffy shit apparently woven from dust bunnies, which sticks to you and releases clouds of choking dust. So I'm up there poking around with a flashlight, expecting to rouse the mice or family of squirrels that have found their way in. What do I find?

A very, very, very, very large raccoon. Sleeping. Unmoving, unfazed by my racket and flashlight and swearing and choking. S/he (let's say He, so my 'Roger the Lodger' moniker works) has torn the insulation to hell, and has used the attic as his portajohn pretty extensively.

Dammit!

So naturally I turn to Google for help on how to get rid of it myself.

Google is not helpful. Everyone who talks about attic raccoons on Google is admittedly very bad at DIY raccoon-removing, or else lives in Texas where it's never winter, or both. So successful stories to help me out are rare. I have to figure out what I want to do all by myself.

Now, what I want to do is go up there with a .410, shoot the fucker, then haul out the carcass and sort out any residual damage to the roof afterward. But I recognize this will not work. Reasons: (1) My shotguns are in Alberta. (2) Firing a shotgun in city limits is illegal. (3) Mrs Clutch would look sidelong at me for, oh, fifteen years.

So, fine. Even raccoons need to get food and drink (Google at least reassured me that they don't hibernate). Yesterday I snuck up there again mid-day and -- hooray! The bastard was out stealing food and pissing in the water supply. My big chance! Out comes the ladder, and up on the perilous snowy roof with a sackful of tools, like some concussed Santa-in-training, goes one hilariously optimistic dipshit determined to find the raccoon's point of entry and shut it.

To everyone's surprise, my own not least, I find the opening (torn caging and a bent piece of soffiting) and am able to fix it. Sheet metal and tin snips, courtesy of Princess Fucking Auto, bam! Who's laughing now, you flea-ridden furry sadsack? You didn't know you were dealing with Clutch "Catcha While Ya Out and Slamma Door Shut" Munny. Hah! I button the thing down so hard that even I'd have a hard time tearing it open again.

Then it's back up into the attic (wore a facemask this time) to check out any more serious damage.

Whazzat? Oh, fuck me. Of course the raccoon can nip down out of the attic proper into the overhanging soffiting whenever he feels like it. And of course he hadn't really been out of the house at all when I first checked. He'd been hiding. There he is! Hi, Mr Raccoon! He was there all along. And now I've fucking locked him in.

So, at this point, something goes boink in the Dumbassum Callosum, the band of neural fibres connecting the Still Small Voice of Conscience to the Doing Things Now! area of the brain. I am no longer Making Good Choices. I climb down from the attic, scattering dusty pieces of raccoon-beshitted insulation into Daughter #1's bedroom, and spend several minutes in silent thought. No "cooling down" or "sober second thought" effect kicks in during this time. I go to the garage and get the fish net and a garden tool whose normal function I won't bother describing -- suffice it to say it can serve well as either a bludgeon or as an exsanguinator.

I tell myself that Plan A is to net the fucker and effect a bloodless though surely panicked removal through the front door, after which (I imagine vaguely) I will box the thing up and drive out to a welcoming woods somewhere, or possibly a dog kennel. But the fact is that I have already decided to skip straight on to Plan B at any provocation, or no provocation at all. The likely absorbent properties of the fluffy insulation in the attic figures prominently in Plan B. I am wearing a heavy jacket, welding gloves, and my workboots; all fear of confronting a large, potential fierce animal in a very enclosed space has vanished and been replaced by the quiet certainty that, toe to toe, I like my chances; and that five injections in the stomach for rabies isn't such a big deal.

Up into the attic once more go I, my assorted tools of violence, and my daft, bloodthirsty plan(s). Roger the Lodger is parked partially into the soffit headfirst where the hole used to be. I crawl over, extend the fishnet, and tap him on the ass, hoping he will turn to face the threat.

Of course he does not. He waddles down under the eaves and disappears in an act of grossly insulting anti-climax. I sit there and sweat in the cold for about fifteen minutes, unable to get closer than about two metres from his egress owing to the roof slope. He doesn't even twitch. This is his life, after all; he's used to sitting silently in the dark for three hours just to get the first lick at the powered sugar in a freshly-junked cookie bag. He's just getting warmed up on his breathing exercises and multiplication tables. I'm bored sick, and frustrated, and have several nails digging into my back, and -- worst of all -- have begun to see myself through the eyes of a dispassionate observer. Who is, naturally, both amused and rather horrified.

Clearly he can do this forever: emerge when I leave, hide when I struggle back up. He is far better adapted to this environment, and is arguably just generally smarter than me. Have I been able to go to his house, shit in the roof, and laugh at him? No.

This time, when I emerge from the attic in a cloud of dry aerosolized raccoon waste, what ensues is more in the manner of genuine reflection. I think for a time. I have a drink of water. I kick myself for having put the ladder away again. Then I phone a pest control agency, arrange to pay them roughly $300 dollars plus tax for a service they will render me three days hence, and re-un-put-away my ladder. Up onto the roof I go again, heavy with shame as I recall my triumphalism upon having come down from it earlier. True to my perceptions, undoing my patch job is exceedingly difficult, but eventually the soffit is open again and Roger is free to come and go for the weekend without destroying the attic in his efforts to escape.

Merry Christmas, motherfucker; enjoy your access point. I'm not promising that I won't vote for capital punishment if the animal control guy solicits my opinion come Monday. But, for now, I must recognize you as the victor in our struggle. Chapeau! And may you shit outside on the roof for once.

[Qingdai]

Best Christmas letter ever!

[Demimonde]

This might be one of those useless Texas recommendations, but have you tried putting a radio with talk or death metal, really loud up there to see if it scares him out? Then you can close the gap when he has fled.

[viscousmemories]

I recommend something considerably more abrasive, like Christian rock or twangy country music.

[Clutch Munny]

Texas/ineffective. And Texas/ineffective. Thanks, though.

[mulebear]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

I recommend something considerably more abrasive, like Christian rock or twangy country music.

That's just cruel.

[livius drusus]

[Clutch Munny]

Holy crap. Net and poky thing!

But if I'd gone up there oiled up like a gladiator, I'd have come down looking like the lint filter in a laundromat dryer.

[livius drusus]

I'm sure your slave girls would have been glad to give you the thorough strigiling you so clearly needed.

[Dingfod]

Lights. Nocturnal critters like raccoons hate lighted areas. Put up some floodlamps.

And mothballs, they work on skunks, so why not raccoons?

[Dingfod]

I would have suggested burning the house down, but that might be a bit of overkill.

[The Lone Ranger]

If I lived closer, I'd offer to trap it for you. (I have a great deal of experience in such matters, after all.)

In case the raccoon in question (or one of its brethren) should return and you wish to get rid of it yourself, Tomahawk makes and sells an excellent line of live traps in various sizes. Pretty-much every wildlife biologist in the U.S. and Canada uses their equipment.

Alternately, in the event of future visits from unwanted attic guests, might I suggest a visit to the Biology department? If your college/university has any wildlife ecologists or mammalogists, they will doubtless have plenty of both trapping equipment and experience.

Cheers,

Michael

[Dingfod]

Havahart makes traps very similar to those.

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by Dingfod

Lights. Nocturnal critters like raccoons hate lighted areas. Put up some floodlamps.

And mothballs, they work on skunks, so why not raccoons?

I suspect they can burrow down into the insulation to enjoy the dark. And I hate the smell of mothballs, but they wouldn't make me move outside and live in a snowbank in winter.

Guesswork here, but my internet research suggested that all of these methods are no more annoying to the raccoon than they are to the human occupants of the house, and are no more effective at driving them away. (Some people may have been able to patch the entrance points while the critter was out for other purposes, and then assumed that the raccoon had been driven out by whatever harassment method was in effect.)

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

If I lived closer, I'd offer to trap it for you. (I have a great deal of experience in such matters, after all.)

In case the raccoon in question (or one of its brethren) should return and you wish to get rid of it yourself, Tomahawk makes and sells an excellent line of live traps in various sizes. Pretty-much every wildlife biologist in the U.S. and Canada uses their equipment.

Alternately, in the event of future visits from unwanted attic guests, might I suggest a visit to the Biology department? If your college/university has any wildlife ecologists or mammalogists, they will doubtless have plenty of both trapping equipment and experience.

Cheers,

Michael

It all sounds so reasonable, I agree. I too have trapped a lot of critters -- rarely in the "nice way", but my dad did build a few "A-1 Skunk Traps" for live capture. (To be honest, though, he did shoot them when he released them; the live capture was just so they wouldn't stink under the house.) Funny story, but I won't tell it now.

Anyhow, when you don't own a large live cage trap, and the raccoon's up there now, and you have a free afternoon now, and you've inhaled a good deal of powdered raccoon poop with possible neurotoxic effects, and you're also maybe genetically predisposed to unsubtle solutions to problems that leave you with much, much bigger problems -- yes, Dad, I understand they were hornets, but do you appreciate that it's inconvenient for the whole family to fight fire for eight hours? -- well, this whole "let's see whether one of my biologist colleagues is in the raccoon rescue business" business just naturally kinda blends into the background cognitive noise of the situation. Don't Monday Morning Quarterback me, man! I'm aware that there may have been better ways of handling the situation that would not have been predicated on an enraged raccoon's heedlessly charging into a fish net.

[Clutch Munny]

I feel compelled to share the response of a friend to my story.

With your permission, I'd like to set it as the libretto for yuletide fantasia of sorts. As I imagine it, the cycle would proceed somewhat as follows:

-Ascent and Discovery
-Song of the Oaths
-A Wounded Home Repaired
-Ascent and Discovery (reprised)
-Song of the Oaths (reprised)
-A Troubled Mind
-Nonfrontation
-The Homestead Rebreached
...
-Nature's Sacred Balance

Perforce, there is a gap toward the end here, as the story obviously needs some tying up, but I imagine the following:
--Pest control worker fails to show up on the appointed date (as per the divine right of tradespeople)
--Angry home owner retrenches and undertakes to address the situation on his own.
--Angry home owner accidentally locks himself in the attic (remainder of family are away for hockey tournaments).
--Home owner is sustained over many days by his waxing affection for Roger the Lodger, whose delightful antics buoy his spirits, and whose feces provide physical sustenance.
--Despite new friendship, hope fades.
--At the darkest hour, an intervention: A tartan-clad, talking squirrel (named "Mojo"[?]) enters, hears and is moved by the tale, and notifies all relevant authorities. All are saved. (Band strikes up for Nature's Sacred Balance)

I don't have much in the way of ideas for staging and cast at this point, though I'm pretty sure that the voice of Mojo should be Chris Rock, provided he can master the requisite brogue and sing on key.

I'm pretty sure he's joking, but if not, I would definitely pay money to see it performed, or to see the film.

[Sonoma Bear]

Originally Posted by Clutch Munny

I feel compelled to share the response of a friend to my story.

I'm pretty sure he's joking, but if not, I would definitely pay money to see it performed, or to see the film.

Don't sign away your rights...

[Stormlight]

[Sonoma Bear]

Be careful, be very, very, careful...

Nothing To Do With Arbroath: Raccoon bit off man's penis

[Clutch Munny]

Turns out there isn't even a Bloodlust option from the animal control dudes. They just put a one-way door on the access point, and leave it on for a couple of weeks. Then they patch the hole.

[livius drusus]

That's distressingly reasonable.

[Clutch Munny]

Yeah. But it probably minimizes the risk of penis loss.

[Qingdai]

Well that just takes all the fun right out of it.

Here we have some outfit called the "Critter Gitters" and they get irrationally excited about anything that might be in shape to eat.

[Ymir's blood]

Have you considered anti-personnel mines? They're considered humane enough to use on humans, after all.

[Sonoma Bear]

No news on Roger the Lodger is good news???