Fun with home ownership
Sep. 24th, 2009 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasAll summer, we were battling with a family of raccoons who made their home in our walls. We got rid of three of them, and never got the fourth, so figured it had left. And on Tuesday, we finally had the pest control people come and put sheet metal over the holes that they got in, and counted it as Done, Problem Solved, Mission Accomplished.
Last night, at about 2 AM, our upstairs tenants call.
There was a raccoon IN THE APARTMENT.
Lis did some Googling for a 24-hour animal control place, and found some numbers, all of which were disconnected or not in service. Eventually, I just went up there wearing heavy clothes and work gloves. By that point, our upstairs tenants had called 911, and I went upstairs at just about the same time that a couple of officers showed up.
The raccoon was shut in the second bedroom upstairs, with no people in it, which was good. And the four of us, the tenant who called, the two officers, and me, stared at the door trying to figure out what to do. See, patrol officers' interaction with wildlife is supposed to be limited to "if it was hit by a car and is dying, but still in pain, shoot it". They're not actually supposed to deal with live animals.
I briefly mentioned to them the famous THIS AMERICAN LIFE episode (a National Public Radio program in which people tell their true and interesting stories), in which a rookie police officer, on his first patrol ever, gets called to deal with a squirrel in someone's attic. It ends with the rookie's partner hospitalized, and the house in flames. We all agreed that we would attempt to NOT do that.
One of the officers said, "I COULD have decided to carry the BIG nightstick tonight, but no . . . I had to take the short one . . ."
So. I picked up a broom, one of the officers picked up an umbrella, the other picked up a walking stick. We decided that our best bet was to open the door to the deck, and try to chase the raccoon outside.
Given that I was the only one wearing gloves, and that, frankly, it's my responsibility as homeowner, I got to open the door and poke the raccoon with the broom.
He came out the door, and immediately hid under the futon sofa in the living room. Okay, he's now ONE room closer to the door, but this is still suboptimal.
So, I poke the raccoon with a broom. Growling ensues.
The next room over is the front room. The front room has four doors in it -- the front door to the apartment -- closed -- the door to the deck -- open -- a doorway to the kitchen, which doesn't have a door, and a doorway to the living room, with no door on it. The raccoon, futon, and I are all in the living room.
One officer places himself in front of the kitchen door, to block that exit, the other stands nearby. I lift up the futon, and poke the raccoon again. He runs -- toward the kitchen. And then back again, back to under the sofa. Doesn't even CONSIDER the porch.
We try to figure out ways to block the kitchen better, even visually (and I have to admit, seeing a police officer carrying a frilly lacy black parasol was kind of worth the price of admission right there) and try it again.
The raccoon runs out to the kitchen -- sees the umbrellas and parasol that are blocking the way, turns around -- and runs straight up into the china cabinet.
We all look at each other.
There is now a raccoon in a china cabinet that is filled with fragile things -- blown glass bottles, porcelain saints, teacups . . .
I don't know about the officers, but I'm definitely thinking about THIS AMERICAN LIFE.
I start, VERY CAREFULLY, taking fragile things out from in front of the raccoon. The coon hunkers back behind the stack of plates. And growls at me in a VERY warning tone. I've gotten a couple of things out from in front of him, which ought to make it easier for him to get out.
Lis comes upstairs and says that she finally found a 24-hour animal control place; she'd phoned them and gotten their answering service, but the animal control guy would call back within five minutes.
And then starts the standoff. For the next hour, I continue to stand in the doorway to the living room, and one of the officers stands in the doorway to the kitchen. (The third officer is hanging out on the porch, which, frankly, was probably less-than-helpful, but I didn't want to say anything.) We chatted for a bit -- "You know, raccoon," the officer said, "if you'd just COOPERATE, this'd be real easy . . . "
"Doesn't that basically sum up all of police work?" I asked.
"Well, yeah, ninety percent, anyway. . . "
We traded raccoon stories while we were waiting. He'd apparently been out for a walk one time in the wee hours when he came upon a raccoon vs skunk fight. He'd assumed that it'd be all about the raccoon -- and, yes, the raccoon started out with the upper hand, well, paw, being three times the skunk's size -- but he forgot that skunks are related to badgers, and the skunk was winning after a bit. At about that point, the officer realized that he was standing there watching a skunk fight, and he decided that prudence demanded that he be somewhere else before the skunk remembered its other weapon. All three of them left thereafter, in three different directions.
He also told the story that, when he had been a Marine, they were doing an exercise at Camp Lejueune, in which they were two teams hunting each other. He had been tracking a few of the other team, and was doing well crawling through the grass and about to get the drop on them -- when he came face-to-face with a raccoon. "Tactical disciple went RIGHT out the window, and the hunter became the hunted."
After about an hour, ("That's been a LONG five minutes,") we looked at each other, and at the raccoon hunkered down behind the plates in the china cabinet, and figured that this just wasn't going to work. We decided that our best bet was to move some of the kitchen bookcases to block the door to the kitchen (our tenant's bedroom, in which the cat was, and the bathroom, would all be on THAT side of the barricade, and the raccoon and the porch would be on THIS side), and go to bed, leaving the porch door open, and see if he figured out how to get out.
So we did that. I checked the apartment this morning, and I didn't SEE a raccoon, so I'm hoping it worked.
And I've got a call in to the animal control people who did the exclusion to figure out what happened and how to fix it.
My theory? We blocked up the holes with the raccoon INSIDE, and he had to find a way to come through the INSIDE wall. I'll talk to them and see if that makes sense.
Last night, at about 2 AM, our upstairs tenants call.
There was a raccoon IN THE APARTMENT.
Lis did some Googling for a 24-hour animal control place, and found some numbers, all of which were disconnected or not in service. Eventually, I just went up there wearing heavy clothes and work gloves. By that point, our upstairs tenants had called 911, and I went upstairs at just about the same time that a couple of officers showed up.
The raccoon was shut in the second bedroom upstairs, with no people in it, which was good. And the four of us, the tenant who called, the two officers, and me, stared at the door trying to figure out what to do. See, patrol officers' interaction with wildlife is supposed to be limited to "if it was hit by a car and is dying, but still in pain, shoot it". They're not actually supposed to deal with live animals.
I briefly mentioned to them the famous THIS AMERICAN LIFE episode (a National Public Radio program in which people tell their true and interesting stories), in which a rookie police officer, on his first patrol ever, gets called to deal with a squirrel in someone's attic. It ends with the rookie's partner hospitalized, and the house in flames. We all agreed that we would attempt to NOT do that.
One of the officers said, "I COULD have decided to carry the BIG nightstick tonight, but no . . . I had to take the short one . . ."
So. I picked up a broom, one of the officers picked up an umbrella, the other picked up a walking stick. We decided that our best bet was to open the door to the deck, and try to chase the raccoon outside.
Given that I was the only one wearing gloves, and that, frankly, it's my responsibility as homeowner, I got to open the door and poke the raccoon with the broom.
He came out the door, and immediately hid under the futon sofa in the living room. Okay, he's now ONE room closer to the door, but this is still suboptimal.
So, I poke the raccoon with a broom. Growling ensues.
The next room over is the front room. The front room has four doors in it -- the front door to the apartment -- closed -- the door to the deck -- open -- a doorway to the kitchen, which doesn't have a door, and a doorway to the living room, with no door on it. The raccoon, futon, and I are all in the living room.
One officer places himself in front of the kitchen door, to block that exit, the other stands nearby. I lift up the futon, and poke the raccoon again. He runs -- toward the kitchen. And then back again, back to under the sofa. Doesn't even CONSIDER the porch.
We try to figure out ways to block the kitchen better, even visually (and I have to admit, seeing a police officer carrying a frilly lacy black parasol was kind of worth the price of admission right there) and try it again.
The raccoon runs out to the kitchen -- sees the umbrellas and parasol that are blocking the way, turns around -- and runs straight up into the china cabinet.
We all look at each other.
There is now a raccoon in a china cabinet that is filled with fragile things -- blown glass bottles, porcelain saints, teacups . . .
I don't know about the officers, but I'm definitely thinking about THIS AMERICAN LIFE.
I start, VERY CAREFULLY, taking fragile things out from in front of the raccoon. The coon hunkers back behind the stack of plates. And growls at me in a VERY warning tone. I've gotten a couple of things out from in front of him, which ought to make it easier for him to get out.
Lis comes upstairs and says that she finally found a 24-hour animal control place; she'd phoned them and gotten their answering service, but the animal control guy would call back within five minutes.
And then starts the standoff. For the next hour, I continue to stand in the doorway to the living room, and one of the officers stands in the doorway to the kitchen. (The third officer is hanging out on the porch, which, frankly, was probably less-than-helpful, but I didn't want to say anything.) We chatted for a bit -- "You know, raccoon," the officer said, "if you'd just COOPERATE, this'd be real easy . . . "
"Doesn't that basically sum up all of police work?" I asked.
"Well, yeah, ninety percent, anyway. . . "
We traded raccoon stories while we were waiting. He'd apparently been out for a walk one time in the wee hours when he came upon a raccoon vs skunk fight. He'd assumed that it'd be all about the raccoon -- and, yes, the raccoon started out with the upper hand, well, paw, being three times the skunk's size -- but he forgot that skunks are related to badgers, and the skunk was winning after a bit. At about that point, the officer realized that he was standing there watching a skunk fight, and he decided that prudence demanded that he be somewhere else before the skunk remembered its other weapon. All three of them left thereafter, in three different directions.
He also told the story that, when he had been a Marine, they were doing an exercise at Camp Lejueune, in which they were two teams hunting each other. He had been tracking a few of the other team, and was doing well crawling through the grass and about to get the drop on them -- when he came face-to-face with a raccoon. "Tactical disciple went RIGHT out the window, and the hunter became the hunted."
After about an hour, ("That's been a LONG five minutes,") we looked at each other, and at the raccoon hunkered down behind the plates in the china cabinet, and figured that this just wasn't going to work. We decided that our best bet was to move some of the kitchen bookcases to block the door to the kitchen (our tenant's bedroom, in which the cat was, and the bathroom, would all be on THAT side of the barricade, and the raccoon and the porch would be on THIS side), and go to bed, leaving the porch door open, and see if he figured out how to get out.
So we did that. I checked the apartment this morning, and I didn't SEE a raccoon, so I'm hoping it worked.
And I've got a call in to the animal control people who did the exclusion to figure out what happened and how to fix it.
My theory? We blocked up the holes with the raccoon INSIDE, and he had to find a way to come through the INSIDE wall. I'll talk to them and see if that makes sense.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 01:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 01:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 02:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 02:20 pm (UTC)As far as the canned air goes: yes, we have plenty of it in the house. But I do not intend on getting into air-can-blasting range of a raccoon if I can possibly help it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 02:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 02:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 02:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 02:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 03:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 03:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 03:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 03:56 pm (UTC)signed,
Clueless
evilhelpful foreigner:>
Gave me a good giggle, sorry for your eventful night!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 04:06 pm (UTC)I would even suspect that that was among the problems we were dealing with: the younger of the two officers would occasionally go, "C'mere raccoon, come on," to coax it. Because our experience with cute fuzzy animals is that most of 'em are pets and you can TALK to them.
A raccoon, on the other hand, is a wild animal and a Very Large Carnivore Making Sounds At You is not actually that encouraging to them.
Raccoons can, apparently, be tamed. Probably not THIS one, though.
And the impulse to pick it up and cuddle it as I escort it outside was, in fact, there. I really WANTED to pick it up and cuddle it while I took it outside. Even if it WAS growling.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 04:13 pm (UTC)I used to have regular encounters with raccoons when I was living in Irvine (CA). Student housing attracts critters, ya know. I dumped my garbage on a dumpster-diving raccoon a few times (the dumpsters were *open*, g-d knows why), and once faced down two big-ass raccoons who'd decided to use the top of my car as a grooming station. They won. OTOH, seeing the baby raccoons out and about was great... they are super-cute.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 05:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 06:53 pm (UTC)what you did in the end was the best thing, short of having a large crate available that you could shove in front of the bathroom. just leave it alone, block off where you absolutely don't want it, put some yummy food outside, and it'll toodle off once it's no longer panicked.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 07:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 07:45 pm (UTC)to get them out of a place, food is useful, however. more useful than cops. and while they're smart enough to figure where food is once it might be there again, they're also smart enough to figure out when that doesn't happen. urban environments have lots of food sources.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 07:56 pm (UTC)And they were.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 08:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 08:55 pm (UTC)not that cute
Date: 2009-09-24 09:16 pm (UTC)Re: not that cute
Date: 2009-09-24 09:27 pm (UTC)Like my little sister, for instance.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 09:49 pm (UTC)I happened to be there when they were removing what was, I think, the last of them, an older male. Big thing, it took two guys to carry the cage. As it got close to me, I saw two things that alarmed me. (1) Raccoons have thumbs! Why didn't somebody tell me that? OMG, we're doomed! and (2) That thing was clearly and unmistakably looking each and every one of us in the face and memorizing our features for later.
Apparently their native social structures are all wrong for domestication, which is something of a shame; the first breeder to perfect domestication of raccoons would make a fortune.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 10:03 pm (UTC)Cats' native social structures are also wrong for domestication, but we've managed to evolve a domestic-like coexistence with them. But never with raccoons. Lis's theory as to why is that we are in no way in competition with cats. Human beings do not eat mice and rats as a significant part of our diet; we can live in the same area without competition, which allowed cats and humans to grow to a mutual tolerance and even liking.
Raccoons and humans, though, DO compete for the same resources. Raccoons eat what we eat -- fish, fruit, vegetables, and so forth. Because of that, humans and raccoons could never evolve a mutually beneficial close cohabitation, like humans and cats have.
Which is a pity -- raccoons are adorable and intelligent. They're of a size which is actually awkward for their arboreal existence -- they're not as good tree-climbers as cats, for instance. They're large enough to be ungainly, and their heads are too big. Their front paws are not specialized enough to be as good climbers OR hunters as other animals in the same niche.
In other words, they're spending energy and ability in gaining intelligence and dextrous hands. The species is making the "versatility gamble".
Bay State Pest Control does not do bait, trap, and relocate. It's illegal to do so in Massachusetts. They do bait, trap, and euthanize. Because raccoons are too smart to relocate -- they will come back. Or, if they don't, they'll have learned about how to live in human-constructed structures, and be able to be the same kind of pest to someone else -- except now, they'll be too experienced to trap.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 10:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-24 11:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-25 12:28 am (UTC)Humans and cats get along only because cats allow it.
As the saying goes, Cats were once worshipped as Gods. They have never forgotten this. :)
On the other hand, Humans and Dogs/Wolves also have the same diet (at least the carnivore side) and we get along better than Humans/Cats. :)
I'm just sayin'. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-25 12:42 am (UTC)Domestic animals are, without exception that I know of, herd, pack, or flock animals. I certainly could be wrong about this, but I can't think of any exceptions. Because of this, the ones that are trainable think of humans as the alpha.
Cats, on the other hand, don't have a pack structure (well, except for lions). Ferals with a steady source of food CAN deal with living in groups, but, again, it's not a pack/herd/flock.
So cats are in a different category -- they don't live SUBJECT to humans, considering humans as the alpha, but rather live WITH humans. They'll still look to us as parent figures, but it's a different relationship.
It would not be possible to domesticate a raccoon -- socially, you could theoretically end up with a relationship similar to cats. But we don't have such a relationship, because we're in competition.
We're not in competition with dogs because we are able to dominate them -- we can live together with dogs but be their masters.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-25 01:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-25 10:16 pm (UTC)I can tell you coons love peanuts, raisins (which they'll roll in their very human-like paws to 'wash'), and anything salty. (We never fed them meat.) I can also tell you from personal experience that baby coons have very sharp claws, like cats, and can climb jeans just like a kitten.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-25 11:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-26 12:31 pm (UTC)Heh, at least it didn't start throwing the china, they're quite good with their paws and holding things, aren't they? Nasty man makes noise, me throw plates works well in a lot of relationships, the tv informs me... :>
Awww... what's multiple scratches and a trip to the ER between friends?
The most we have to deal with is wasps, spiders and the occasional baffled sparrow!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-26 12:51 pm (UTC)Not quite as clever, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-26 12:56 pm (UTC)Not in Liverpool.
And they fail on the cute and fuzzy level too, come to think...! :)