Our new neighbors

Believe it or not, we have new neighbors...not the kind of neighbors I prefer, but new neighbors nonetheless. Ben called me the other day to break the news that an entire family of RACCOONS had taken up residence in our chimney!!! Yes, raccoons, and yes, our chimney. We'd been hearing some rustling in our basement which I attributed to mice (thankfully I was wrong), but Ben got up on the roof with his flashlight to see eight innocent yellow eyes staring up at him from the depths below. This perhaps wouldn't have been so terrifying had we not just listened to a story on our favorite radio program EVER, This American Life on NPR, about a rabid raccoon's encounter with a woman who had to hit it over the head for 15 minutes with a tire iron to abate a pretty serious attack. I should probably take this opportunity to encourage all readers who have never listened to this delightful program to download the free weekly podcast for pure unadulterated entertainment. On second thought, perhaps that rabid raccoon story isn't the best recruitment tool, but trust me, you will NOT be disappointed.

Back to the issue at hand...Ben, thinking the problem would have the simplest of solutions, called Animal Control to come and get the varmints out of our chimney. But no, they do not retrieve them unless the animals have already been caught. They rented us a trap and gave us some catfood, telling us we would have trapped raccoons by morning and then they'd pick them up for us. Well, the trap definitely worked, just not the way we expected.

The next morning, I received a disturbing phone call from my non-animal neighbor who happens to be a good friend. Nervously, she told me that her kids heard loud animal noises coming from our yard on the way to school. They came to our yard, saw the trap, the open can of cat food, and their trapped pet cat mewing, or shall I say lamenting loudly. Based on the evidence at hand, their family made the natural assumption that we, the Belnaps, were trying to catch their cats to get rid of our feline friends. My poor neighbor had been crying all morning and against the advice of her husband, called us about the situation. After much emphatic explanation about our varmint problems on my part, the issue was resolved. She ended the phone call in a much more lighthearted tone...I'm just so glad she called me about it.

Two days later, that cat was still the only victim of our trap, which by the way, doesn't hurt animals, just traps them. Every night, the scratching and rustling of the raccoons in the chimney grew louder, we could see dirt and junk falling amongst the cracks in the flue into our fireplace, and I was beginning to feel infested and diseased, not to mention extremely anxious that they would find a way to get under the flue, hide under a bed, attack our children, and leave me with the only logical option of beating it with a tire iron for 15 minutes.

And then, a light...a grand discovery. Ben got on the roof this morning, looked down the chimney, and found that the animals were gone. As they are nocturnal and leave the chimney only at night, we weren't sure as to whether they were sleeping down there, or just hadn't returned from their raucous night of dumpster diving. He threw stuff down there, banged on the flue from underneath, and finally just to be sure, threw a burning stick down the chimney to smoke any lollygaggers out. Nothing...they are GONE! We quickly bought a cover/grate designed to prevent such problems, installed it, and are now in the clear, all without ever trapping a raccoon.

And tonight, yet another call from another cat-owning anxious neighbor who had "heard" we were in the business of purposely trapping cats in our yard. She laughed after another lengthy explanation on my part...that relieved embarrassed kind of laugh. I thought we had a better reputation than the neighborhood quacks who kill family pets, but whatever...

Moral of the story: Install chimney covers if you haven't already, and definitely download "This American Life"...you'll thank us someday.