Final Eviction – I Hope

Well, on Friday I finally gave in and got a trap from Jay (our maintenance supervisor) in hopes to catch our non-rent paying resident. The big question from everyone at work was what we were going to do when we caught it. We resolved this by offering to make Randy dinner if he would come get it (I think by Saturday night, I had guilted him enough he finally gave in).

By time I got home on Friday, it was dark, so decided to wait to Saturday to catch us a squirrel. Now this was a chore in itself. First, we had to figure out how to set the trap (which we finally did), then we had to put it up in the attic. When I say “we” I mean Melissa. I was not going up there for anything as long as there was something living up there. Putting it up there was not as easy as we thought it would be. Turns out our step ladders were not tall enough for anyone to actually climb up there and the crawl space was too small to actually lift the trap directly up into the attic, so Melissa had to turn it on end, feel around to find a good spot to put the trap and then set it up there. THEN we had to get the bait in there. Since the bait had to be put in the back of the trap, this was really tricky. We didn’t want to set the trap off in the process, but since our ladder wasn’t tall enough, there was no way for her to reach all the way to the back of the trap. She ended up having to stick her fingers through the holes in the trap and working the bowl of bait towards the back (very impressive I must say). Once everything was in place, we closed up the hole and waited.

I got home before Melissa on Saturday night, and I didn’t hear anything when I got home, but by time she got home, she could definitely tell we had caught our non-rent paying resident. I didn’t know this till after church Sunday morning. I guess it had kept her up all night trying to get out of the cage. When I got home, she opened the crawl space back up and tried to see if she could see anything. Her first comment was “I see fur.” Then she looked again and said something I didn’t expect – “it’s NOT a squirrel.” She saw ears and at first thought it might be a cat and then looked a third time and concluded it was a raccoon! She even stuck her digital camera up there to confirm it.

So, here was our dilemma. Though Randy offered to take the squirrel out of our attic, wasn’t sure that offer would apply to a raccoon AND he was in Enid and I didn’t want to leave that thing up there any longer than necessary. So I called Jay since he’s all about anything that has to do with wildlife. As you can see, we weren’t exaggerating. We really did have a raccoon in our attic. It was really pretty tame for a wild raccoon. Jay said he kept trying to play with his shoe laces when he took him out to Lake Arcadia to let him go. Tame or not, I did not want him (or her) living in my attic.

So far, I think we’re resident free, but not 100% sure yet. We need to get a taller ladder so we can peek up there and see if we can tell where it was getting in at. THEN I’m hoping my brother will come visit me and patch up the entry spot it it’s on my end of the unit (if it’s not, the land lord for the other three units will be getting a phone call.)

Oh, and I must apologize to the squirrel that I blamed for living in my attic. I'm sorry Mr. Squirrel, but let this be a lesson to you -- you move into my attic, you will get re-located.