Twitter
Critters Seek Our Shelter
Over the holidays, the kids and I watched the movie "Evan Almighty," the hilarious story of a politician (Steve Carell) chosen by God (Morgan Freeman) to build a modern-day ark.
Let's just say Carell's character was skeptical about his mission - until animals started showing up, two by two, in his yard.
Who knew a silly movie could be so... prophetic?
I guess, in retrospect, the dogs did.
Even before Christmas, we noticed one of our hound dogs had started climbing up onto the hearth and barking into the fireplace on occasion.
My husband looked up there but didn't see anything. And, after all, these are old redbones. They bark at a lot of things we don't see.
We didn't pay it much mind - until a week ago Thursday, about 4 a.m. when both dogs positioned themselves in front of the fireplace and howled as if possessed. Their cacophony was both caused by and punctuated by a loud animal sound - a cross between a chirp and a growl - coming from the chimney.
Al Richards, with Critter Control, quickly made the diagnosis. "You got yourself a raccoon," he said.
Actually, two.
Turns out our home, like so many across North Carolina, had become a halfway house to furry creatures seeking refuge from a cold snap.
Joe Folta, a wildlife biologist with the state Wildlife Resources Commission, said it happens every year. Wild animals are opportunistic. The temperature dips, and animals seek shelter where it's warm and dry. Like my chimney.
If you do get a critter inside, Folta said, it's OK to shoo him out the door. But relocating wild animals is against state law, unless you have a permit.
So much for dropping our raccoons into someone's else's chimney.
Richards, who is certified by the state to trap animals, proposed setting up traps for the raccoons and applying the permanent deterrent: a chimney cap.
We decided to just run the coons out of the chimney (rather than trap and kill them) and install the cap while they were gone.
It seemed simple enough, except that while Richards was outside measuring for the cap, he noticed a hole in a board leading into our attic. He warned us that the displaced raccoons might just set up housekeeping there next if we didn't have it fixed.
This is a hole, mind you, that was started by carpenter bees, fleshed out by pecking birds and capitalized upon by squirrels we've heard cavorting in the attic. In lovely male-female pairs, no doubt.
In the end, we didn't have to build an ark.
We did have to hire a carpenter to replace the board.
Between that and the Critter Control visit, we could have paid for a nice weekend getaway.
But at least the critters are gone.
Now we're down to the occasional pair of field mice. And the two animals we actually invited to live in our home.
Which, Lord knows, is plenty.
Credits: By Ruth Sheehan - Newsobserver.com
