The next day my brother was outside cleaning up the patio when he smelled an awful smell that he was sure belonged to the now dead raccoon. The raccoon died from being locked in there for a week when my brother was in Portland. At least that was the going theory.
The next morning around 3am, my brother's wife heard their bedroom door creak open and four little feet scamper to the side of the bed where she was sleeping and rustle among the pillows. I can only imagine the actual pandemonium caused by the raccoon at this point as she smacked my brother into consciousness while whisper-screaming that the raccoon had infiltrated the house. My brother jumped into action only to discover the LG sleeping soundly among the pillows on the floor. Apparently he was doing a bit of sleep walking around Gmas house. I hear that the stink face made by the LG when a somewhat unfamiliar face awakened him to take him back to bed was scary enough to qualify him as some type of critter.
Poor raccoon that never was. It turned out that the dead animal stench was from a dead squirrel that the BK had placed in a bag and left to bake in the sun until someone told him it was okay to toss it in the trash. The critter running around at 6am when I was nursing turned out to be my sister-in-law, who sneaked out to grab a glass of water without my brother knowing. Goes to show you should always go to the source.
You would think we had learned our lesson, but the next day it was pouring and the ceiling started to leak (and I thought I was done with fixer-uppers when I left Portland). We wanted to go into the attic to check out the leak without getting drenched on the roof. The BK was sure he heard the raccoon which resulted in him shrieking like a school girl (bless his heart), and required me to take matters into my own hands and crawl up to the attic armed with a hard hat and flashlight. I ended up scampering down as well at the first strange noise. An exterminator was beckoned and showed up reeking of vodka 45 minutes later (in his defense, it was a Saturday night, and he did show up pretty quickly) only to confirm what we really should have known all along - when in doubt, assume the critter is a tiny squirrel, not a carnivorous, baby eating, raccoon. You should be reassured, however, that the exterminator assured us that he was willing to "grab that coon by the neck, if I need to - I've done it before!" Thanks exterminator man, good to know.
As you can see from the pic below, the squirrels have been working on building a compound in the attic for some time. Can't wait to get started cleaning up this mess. Yup, that's a golf bag filled with walnuts. And yes, those are empty milk cartons that my dad was apparently planning on saving until the second coming.
