The Raccoon Saga: Part 1
A story of the raccoon saga originally written and shared on Facebook by my mother-in-law, Cindy Boehler.
WHAT SHE SAID-3/12/23
I have had so many people respond either online or in person to the article I wrote a few days back referencing setting live traps for raccoons in an abandoned house I found for my kids last summer. We will get to that, but first a little background…
I think it will be about 2 or 3 years ago this coming June that my kids pulled me aside at a Festival where Alexa and I were performing and told me we had to talk after we got done with one of our sets…they could see the panic in my eyes, so they were gracious enough to tell me it was a good talk! At that little meeting tucked back into a corner, they told me that they were ready to start thinking about moving their family back to Nebraska..that was always part of the plan…come back home when they had started a family. Of course, I was ecstatic and this all set into motion helping them to make their dreams a reality.
We had a couple of sites in mind on family land and after lots of discussion and visiting the sites, they fell in love with some land that my ex and I had purchased many years ago just north of the KS state line. This land had belonged to his grandfather, so it was pretty special when JJ agreed to let them purchase some of it for their build. What made it even more special was this was where Max and his high school buddies dragged old couches and recliners and mattresses out to for weekend camping trips…some are still there and I told them they should have a bonfire with them once they were moved out there.
My daughter in law is the ultimate researcher and planner…if I ever needed something researched or planned, I would hire her in a heart beat! So she set to finding prototypes of the types of homes they were interested in and at the beginning, the pole barn seemed to fit the bill, so I contacted a couple of firms here in the area…they had asked me at the very start to step in as General Contractor of sorts since they live 5 hours away, which I have done to the best of my ability!
Then we all know what happened next…the cost of housing products skyrocketed and just the sheer inability to get materials overwhelmed their plans. So putting our heads together in one of many brainstorming calls, I asked them to consider the option of finding an old home that could be moved to the property…there are so many dotting the countryside and in small towns in every direction. I told Alexa I would do the footwork here and she could make the calls and do research how to get the home actually moved and what it would cost to do so.
Right away, she found a beautiful old two story on Facebook Marketplace just a few miles from where she was raised and I think that very next day, I made the trip over to drive past it and knew it was special. It was a fairly good price, but was a hoarder home…seems we had the knack for finding those…so we requested to go look at it and we both fell in love with it. We both seem to have a large love for old houses and beautiful woodwork and character. Unfortunately, we didn’t end up getting it so the search was back in my ball court again.
Many of you may remember me placing my plea on FB for any leads and although there were a couple that I went and looked at, those didn’t pan out. Let me tell you…I spent so many hours and drove so many miles looking in every small town within a 50 mile radius, and even one down east of Hays, Kansas that was amazing and cheap, but too far away. But I do this all the time because I am weird. Before Terry and I started dating and were just friends, he would come down and that’s what we would do…drive around and look at old houses in towns because we are both weird like that. I bet I had driven in 90% of the nearby towns and scribbled down so, so many addresses and took pictures to forward on to Lex to see if she was interested. Then she would look them up and find out who owned them. But we still hadn’t found anything. A second plea on Facebook.
I tried to incorporate the search into trips when I would be going somewhere to sing and it was on the return trip one afternoon from singing in Hastings that I decided to swing through Bladen and Campbell and look at a home she had found online. That one looked really awful so I didn’t spend much time there, but as I was coming up to another small town close to home, I decided to drive through to see if there was anything that caught my eye…and there she was. I drove by a couple of times and then stopped to look from the street. The next door neighbors were sitting out in the yard, so I walked over and introduced myself and handed them a business card. I asked if they knew who owned the house and he told me he had just sold it the week before. I asked him if he knew what the new owner was planning on doing with it as I was looking for a home to move to a different location. His wife said they should burn it down! Ha!
Anyways, I asked if he wouldn’t mind giving my information to the new owner and having him call me, which he did the very next day. I had sent the initial “woohoo” to Alexa along with exterior pics and told her I would be looking at it the next day.
I can’t explain my love for old houses…mine is 115 years old and this one was built in the late 1800’s, but boy howdy, despite the state it was in, it was love at first sight. This home would have been a show piece when it was built and its character is still intact despite the lowly circumstances in which it was left by the last owner who was a heavy smoker and hoarder. But I have the ability to look past all of that…I can see the promise where others would flee. I immediately fell in love with the sturdy grand staircase and the glass transoms above the doors…the double arched windows on two of the doors leading to the back porch. The solid, strong and level wood floors that I knew would be under bad 70’s carpeting. This home was crying out to be restored! After I had seen the home, I made an offer and he said he would talk to his wife. She called me the next day and was thrilled to sell it…she sees the promise, but also all of the work!
The kids made a trip back to look at it and were just as in love as I was and not daunted by the state of the beautiful old girl. You see, for the past few years, raccoons have found a way into the home and boy howdy, have they been having a big old raccoon jamboree! We thought we had the hole plugged up last fall, and we did for an amount of time as we found one deceased critter near the hole inside, but they had burrowed through to a new hole and we could see that they had been in the house for some parties over the winter. Terry and I evidently scared them out when we were there last week. We replugged the hole and came back a week later and set 2 live traps, which were empty today. If there were any in the house, they would have been needing food and water and we feel confident they would have gone into the traps. That and the fact there were no new raccoon droppings in their favorite spot! So we feel pretty confident that we have it secured again, but we left the traps set for another week to make sure! So, it is our goal to go through the mountains of stuff that was left in the two stories and then gut and ready it to be moved south of Orleans. It is also our goal to document the whole process, but what I will show you is a couple of shots of why it was love at first sight for us and also the raccoon path leading from the shelter belt of trees to the hole into the house…weird little destructive critters!
What I would like for you to take away from this story is to never give up on your dreams, because several times this dream got kind of frustrating and hard on all of us (and it’s only just beginning), but to also not judge a book by it’s cover. Yes this house, just like a lot of us, is weather worn and feeling its age…just like the house, we have been left in shambles sometimes, but if our foundation is good, (insert God reference here), we can be brought back to life and serve a real purpose and possibly be part of someone’s dream and future. Think on that…Much Love…CMB
