Raccoons

Calder is one of the craziest and most adventurous people I know. He can scale mile high cliffs without a drop of sweat going to anxiety. He has sailed alone on the open ocean, miles from shore and other land-born creatures for days at a time. He uses power saws, waving digits and limbs precariously close to rotating blades without flinching. I thought his fearlessness was relentless. Then we moved into our Midway country house complete with country mice and other critters and found the weakness in his manly persona...raccoons.

Before we restored the log cabin, it was home to many furry creatures. The neighbors said they used to hear raccoon fights at night, the ceiling was home to families of black-eyed bandits, and they had chewed several holes in the stairs. The first day Calder walked into the house he wore a hazmat suit and carried a stick. He would throw open closet and bedroom doors like cops on Law and Order expecting a raccoon to jump out and attack him from every new space investigated. It wasn't hard to startle him with a sudden movement his direction, and I took advantage of the opportunity to make him jump. The only sign of raccoons left were wheelbarrow loads full of feces we shoveled out of the house (which had been abandoned of two-legged humans for 40 years) and a couple of carcasses we found in the crawl space. The first one we pulled out hadn't been dead long, and our neighbor Mike helped us pull the smelly bugger out.

Since those initial days, we have had a few more encounters with the ringed rodents. They have loved hiding under our deck and the neighbors have seen them scurry under the deck hatch many times. Before we sealed the crawl space we once heard them scratching under the floor, which I will admit was a bit creepy. They are considered pests in the valley and the non-native species really proliferates in the rural town. Most locals shoot or run-down raccoons on sight. But their numbers never seem to dwindle. One of our neighbors shot almost a dozen of the rodents during the late summer, all from the comfort of his porch.

Last week Calder opened the deck hatch to close the crawl space and seal out the wintery cold air. I was at work, on the phone with him while he was opening up the hatch. Mid-conversation I heard a frightened "Oh my..."and then nothing. Just open air. My heart jumped as I pictured him falling off the roof, or being attacked by masked men and I quickly wondered who I could call to rescue him from whatever calamity had befallen him. "Calder?...Calder?" I queried with no response. Finally, "oh my gosh, there is a raccoon RIGHT there!" I should have known--he was scared speechless by the critter. After he regained composure he was able to explain that the culprit was not just any raccoon, but a DEAD raccoon, lying in the opening of the crawlspace. When he opened the hatch he saw it there in front of him and afraid it was alive, cried out in fear. One of these days a raccoon might kill Calder--by giving him a heart attack.

Even a dead raccoon was not something Calder wanted any part of. He called our neighbor Josh and Dottie the dog over to help handle the problem. Dottie couldn't find any other raccoons under the deck, so hopefully we won't wake some night to scratching under the floorboards in case on is trapped, and then Calder can avoid the underside of the deck until Spring.