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The joys of (semi) rural living...

Long story (there will be a TL; DR at the end)...the house has a number of trees and tall shrubbery fairly close to it and in the past, I've seen birds, squirrels, and--once--the neighbor's cat Juice on the roof. Occasionally when inside, I can hear the scribble-scrabble of tiny paws and claws running across the roof. It's a little annoying but ultimately ignorable. Last year, the noise got louder and I began to think something was IN the roof. Based on the number of nutshells in the crawl space of the attic, I was guessing it was a squirrel. We have a stand of hickory trees at the far end of the backyard, making it essentially a smorgasbord for the squirrels. Anyways, the noises last year eventually ceased and I didn't give it much more thought.

Fast forward to this winter...the noises are back. The nutshells are back. There's a bag upstairs in the attic that's had multiple small holes chewed in it. I'm starting to feel the same way about squirrels that Cassie feels about summer <g>. I mentioned the squirrels to my Aunt Linda; she told me she has one of those "trap and release" metal contraptions that she uses when she gets chipmunks in HER attic (the joys of semi-rural living). She offered to loan it to us and I told Dad but, tender-hearted gentleman that he is, he doesn't want to evict any critter from the (semi) warm attic and toss them out into the cold, so he said let's wait for spring. Also, he's partially deaf in his right ear and totally deaf in his left ear and doesn't hear the squirrels banging around upstairs, usually either late at night just as I'm drifting off to sleep or right at dawn, an hour or so before I would normally rise.

BTW, a couple weeks ago, I heard a different kind of scribble-scrabble in the attic that sounded suspiciously like something tearing at the thin blinds over the lone attic window. I opened the door and peered up the 13 steps only to see a small red squirrel go flying across the attic floor. The same thing happened a few days later.

Flash forward to early last week...Dad was getting ready for bed and I was in the living room watching TV when we both heard a loud bang. Dad came into the living room to see if I was OK; I shrugged, pointed at the ceiling and simply said "squirrels". A couple nights later, there's another loud bang from upstairs (we live in a ranch, so "upstairs"= large, walk in attic with a crawlspace off to one side) that actually woke Dad from his slumber. I slept right through it...at this point, I'm (almost) used to the noise. I'm neither a light or heavy sleeper but sometimes, if I'm deeply asleep, I can sleep through anything. Ask my bff about the time we went to New Orleans and I slept through someone pounding on our door yelling "fire alarm! Get out" (turned out it was just a prank). Plus I sleep on my side and sometimes just hold a pillow over the exposed ear.

Now it's on. Man (and woman) vs. Squirrel.

That very day, Dad borrowed the non-lethal trap from my aunt. Twice he baited the trap with peanut butter only to have the peanut butter licked clean off the lid just past the trigger plate and the trap sprung but not occupied. Smart squirrel. Dad thought we needed a bigger trap, so he bought one Saturday and baited it. Last night around 9:00, I actually heard the door go down so I went up to see if we actually caught the squirrel...

And I saw a raccoon staring back at me. How in the world did he get into our attic? I know raccoons climb but I didn't think they could get through small spaces. This was a pretty big boy too. And surprisingly chill...he wasn't hissing, scratching or even trying to get out of the cage. He was just...staring back at me with big, soulful eyes that said "why did you do this to me?" I actually felt sorry for him...but not sorry enough to let him stay. I went downstairs and told Dad "Good news and bad news. The good news is the trap works. The bad news is we caught us a raccoon." (he was actually somewhat grateful...he was worried I'd say we'd caught a skunk and it left us its calling card).

A quick Google showed raccoons have surprisingly good homing instincts and need to be taken a minimum of 10-15 miles away, and preferably 25 miles away, to ensure they don't return to your property. We weren't going to drive 25 miles, in the dark, fog and a light hail, just to rehome "Rocky" (Dad named him. Dad names ALL the wildlife that make regular appearances here). Also, it's technically illegal to dump your trapped wildlife in one of the local parks, so we drove to...I'm not going to say where, just in case, but it was a location in a sparsely populated area that has a small lake and a bunch of surrounding woods. There we set Rocky free, hopefully to live a good, long life in the woods and enjoy his lakeside view.

But that dang squirrel might still be up there...

tl; dr - We have a squirrel in the attic. Set a trap and caught a raccoon instead. Set him free in a wooded area far from our house.