My Beautiful Life: Just Around the Riverbend

We finally caught the critter that was tantalizing us in our attic!

At least a week before my parents came, we started hearing an animal in our WALL. We set a trap up in the attic with Vienna Sausages, but continued to hear it scratching in the same place. Barkley even heard it and would bark at it. We knew exactly where it was going in our soffits, but didn't want to close it off and possibly lock it in, so we just waited and moved the trap around every so often for several weeks.

Monday night, we got home from Bible Conference. We let Barkley outside and immediately he stares at the hole in our soffits. Steven looked over in time to see something going inside! He turned on a flash light and stuck it into the hole, to see a raccoon staring back at him! Barkley was FREAKING out barking at him, and he would run inside and bark at the place we usually hear him scratching... He clearly knew this was the animal invading our house and did not want him there!

So, he was inside, but at least now we knew WHAT it was, so we could google "how to catch a raccoon". The website I went to said to use sweets like bread and marshmallows instead of meat to attract it, so Steven made a trail of peanut butter and bread from the hold in our soffit to the cage which we had in the yard before we went to bed.

I woke up that morning around 6 AM to use the rest room, and when Barkley heard me walking around, he started whining really loud, like he usually does when he has an upset stomach and needs to go outside NOW (haha). So I let him out and immediately he ran to wake Steven up, then to the back door. We looked out there to see that the racoon was in the trap! I have no idea how Barkley knew this from his bed, but he did, and he wanted us to know, too.

We rewarded B by letting him spend the rest of the morning in our bed. :)

After getting a little more sleep, we knew we needed to figure out what to do with the raccoon. His skinny lil arms were small enough to go through the holes in the cage and scratch you, so Steven came up with a system using sticks to go through the handles and pull it to the driveway.

This raccoon was MAD. He kept throwing himself at the cage trying to get out, which resulted in him wounding himself. And the ugliest one I have ever seen. I was actually excited when I found out it was a raccoon in the attic, I pictured it cute and friendly and cuddly... but this guy was none of those things!

Barkley was SO proud of himself for helping us, and of course wanted to terrorize his captive... but we didn't want him getting too close and getting scratched. This is him while we were getting the Coon to the driveway (we had a "lemon-sized" hole in the screen before this incident...)

Luckily, we are getting new windows and screens next month! haha.

We decided to let B out on his leash or the yard rope so he could bark at the animal. He really chewed him out and clearly scared it and Steven told the coon to "remember this face".