The Raccoon Saga: Part 3
Part 3 of the raccoon saga originally written and shared on Facebook by my mother-in-law, Cindy Boehler.
WHAT SHE SAID-3/28/23
RACCON UPDATE-The saga continues.
I try not to swear too much and I try to be a kind hearted, compassionate lover of people and animals. But this is war. As many of you have kept up on the ever unfolding story of the Raccoon Riff going on, you will know and understand that I have gone out of my way to trap these little creeps in a humane and kind way. We have had two live traps set up in the kids’ project house for over two weeks now. In that two weeks, we have baited the traps twice and the bait has been eaten, but never anything in the trap. One trap was triggered, but nothing there but thin air and the image in my head of a coon rolling it’s beady little eyes and snickering at Terry and I as it waddles away with a full tummy.
So if you remember, last week I posted pictures of the places we boarded up in the eave of the attached porch. Terry did a nice job and I will include that photo again for those of you who may have not seen it last week. In the past 10 days, I have stopped up and checked traps twice…I have been adamant that I did not want an animal to be caught in a trap for several days.
I sang this morning and again this afternoon in Kearney, had lunch with Terry, stopped and got mom’s mail and watered a few houseplants, then started home knowing that I was going to swing by the house to check traps one last time. You see, Terry and I were deciding to throw in the towel. We had come to the mutual decision to disarm the traps and let the chips fall where they may. The agony of defeat rang louder in our heads than the failed ski jumper in the ABC Wide World of Sports intro back in the 70’s. This critter had finally outsmarted us. Now I had maintained that after we had boarded up the eave that I thought it may have been trapped inside of the house as I had seen new paw prints on one visit. But the constant driving back and forth and worrying what I would do in the event I really did find a raccoon in a trap…well that has been running through my mind for weeks!
Pulling up to the house, I triple masked as I always do, got on my gloves and grabbed my phone in case I needed to call for help. Peeking through the front picture window, I could see that the trap still had not been triggered in the parlor and I was relieved…one down, one to go. I made quite a lot of noise taking the padlock off the front door…giving the little beast the opportunity to stay wide and clear of me. I have this very clear picture of a scene from the Money Pit where the raccoon jumps out of the laundry chute and attaches itself to one Shelly Long’s face. The second trap is also empty and I am relieved again. So I go back and trigger both traps, close and lock the door and breath a sigh of relief/defeat.
As I am walking back to my car, I remember that the last time I was there, Terry asked if i had looked at where we had patched to see if that was holding ok, so I diverted back to the rear porch and couldn’t believe my eyes. That little creep had chewed a hole about 5 inches in diameter through the wood we had screwed up to escape the house. Picture #2 for all of you needing a visual on this. I guess I have to hand it to him…if I knew I was going to die in a stinky old mansion if I didn’t get out, I might chew through a board too. Unbelievable and this confirmed my suspicion that he was indeed trapped inside the house.
Now, even though it hurt my pride, I was willing to lift the flag of surrender just to not have the worry of checking traps by myself anymore. But dagnabbit! This makes me really crabby! I am at least feeling like we may have gotten all of the holes finally plugged up and once we cover this one with platinum steel, maybe the critter will either not be able to get back in or face the consequences of it’s own bad decisions ! We will go back up on Friday, fix this gap, retrieve the traps to return and then stop going up every few days to check on things. For the first time in this whole saga, I don’t really care anymore what becomes of Rocky Raccoon…he is going to have to sleep in the bed that he is making, snoozing with all of the poop he has deposited on it! Much love…CMB
