Raccoons

 I’m writing this as an attempt to mitigate my own anxieties about living in this new house, under a ceiling full of raccoons. I am on my phone, as my wifi is here but not working, and it’s somewhat late. I wish instead I was going to sleep but that doesn’t feel like it’s in the cards for right now. The wind is whipping outside so it’s hard to tell if I’m hearing the whistling wind and rustling of trees, or if I’m hearing little raccoon feet scratching to get out of the walls. 

I had an exterminator come today, and he confirmed my problem is more than likely raccoons. But I should back up. This is approximately the third blog post I’ve started that covers this plot line, but I’m realizing none have been posted just yet. The bottom line is this: every night, at around 10 pm, there begins a ruckus of running and scratching in my ceiling, spanning the length of the house, but often focused right over my bed. I thought I was imagining it, then I thought it was squirrels, then I thought it was something big and something small, at odds with one another. What one night I believed to be a happy little family of squirrels, the next I thought to be something large hunting something smaller. (At one point I considered it could be a snake, but luckily I was on the phone with Kayleigh (my 4th (?) call of the night) and we were able to accept that it probably wasn’t a snake pretty quickly. Anyway where was I?  Oh yes. This has been perhaps the hardest part of my new living situation. Sometimes they are a nice distraction from all the other noises around this house, and other times they are so loud they keep me awake (they really love to run around 3 or 4am, consistently). I am slightly at ease having walked the whole house with the wildlife expert today and found no points of access for them to get into the interior of the house, although I will still be sleeping with the baby gate closed in the attic so they can’t come running down the steps to get me. I am, however, not terribly at ease with the idea that multiple raccoons are running through my walls and ceiling, and by the sounds of them, building a real life for themselves in there. Now I wonder if they will be upset when we hopefully start catching their friends and family members. Luckily, even in my crazy little brain I don’t think I will fear their retribution too much. 

Sometimes I hear Luna make a little whimper or whine or snore and I think it’s them. Sometimes I hear them, and I know it’s them, and I still wonder if perhaps instead it’s a full human being in my attic. Because someone could definitely secretly be living up there right? Even though I’m up there routinely doing searches and also the noises do not have the weight or texture of a human literally at all. 

Hmmm I’m not sure this is really making me feel better as I had hoped. At least it is drying out my eyes and making them feel a little more sleepy. As I write this I’m starting to hear them for real. It’s nearly 10pm. Right on schedule. 

Anyway, I’d like to thank all of you who have answered  my calls all hours of the night (sometimes 4 or 5 times), come to search the attic with me, and even spent the night with me during these trying and uncertain times. Your friendship and support means so much.