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We've not trapped anything in the attic since the two raccoons, except for a single poor field mouse. Yet we continued to hear noises up there. The pitter patter of tiny feet. Scrabbling. Scratching. Most alarming, crashing (but I never saw anything overturned up there). Last Thursday, after the critters woke Dad AGAIN, he'd had enough. So while I was out running some errands Friday afternoon--because of COURSE he was going to wait until I was out of the house and not there to call for help should something go awry--he grabbed his ultrabright light that he normally uses when working under the hood of his car, went to the attic, folded his 83 year old, nearly 6'4" frame (I'm assuming he's shrunk a tiny bit since he reached his golden years) nearly in half and crawled along the narrow 2" x 4" boards that make up the "floor" of the furthest recesses of the attic...and found a baseball-sized hole right where the slant of the roof meets the west-facing outer wall of our house (and almost right over his bedroom). He also found a sizable pile of nutshells. Since he was unable to flatten himself enough to reach the hole--this isn't an episode of X-Files (fans will know which creature I'm thinking of <g>), Dad instead went outside, grabbed the stepladder and thin sheet of metal (because we have pretty much every kind of weird random materiel somewhere in the garage), climbed up to the top step with the sheet of metal and used it to somehow close the hole. He told me how but I'm having a hard time visualizing it...it sounds like a combination of rolling the metal and stuffing it in the hole and nailing it down somehow.

Friday night, the critters were angry. From 9:30 PM until at least 2:00 AM (when I eventually fell asleep), there was pattering and clattering and a general cacophony going on above my head. I think the animals--squirrels? Raccoons? The neighbor's cats?--were trying to enter their winter home and were stymied by the sheet of metal. Saturday morning, while I was engrossed in a book, Dad went back out, BACK up on the ladder and tinkered with the sheet of metal some more.

The last four nights? Not a sound. It has been utter BLISS. I slept SO soundly the first three nights. Last night, I woke up to a distant sound of what I think was a fox barking (it didn't sound quite like a dog, and we DO have foxes, and the occasional coyote, in our neighborhood). But it only lasted about 30 seconds and I was able to go right back to sleep...after I got up to pee, of course. My bladder is opportunistic that way <g>. I'm not sure if it was the metal or just Dad leaving his (hu)man stink all up in the hole in the roof but the critters have been keeping their distance. I've not even seen as many squirrels in our yard as usual. One was in the driveway the other day; I swear he was staring at me accusingly. I just shooed him away and went back inside to enjoy the silence.