Critters At The Compound

Sunday morning when I got the car out of the garage as we were heading to church, I noticed what looked like dozens of tiny little hand prints on the windshield. I knew that could only mean one thing: raccoons in the garage again. It had been a couple of years since we caught a few of them, so I guess we were due. Later that evening, we backed both vehicles out of the garage and Dad set the cage trap in hopes of catching the little pest. He carefully checked the trap and used a stick to test it and it set it of with ease. Now all we had to do was wait.

Monday morning, Mom and I couldn't wait to get out and see if we'd caught the raccoon. We opened the garage door, only to find that the raccoon had gotten the bread (sprinkled with vanilla) that we had in the trap without setting off the trap. He/she had also gone on a rampage because our garage looked like a war zone. Cans and buckets were knocked over, a tube of caulk had been torn open and had oozed out on the garage floor, and the most aggrivating of them all, the little #$%&er had broken two antique Coke bottles, leaving glass all over the floor. This meant war.

It took Dad almost an hour yesterday to clean up the garage, and then he carefully set the trap again, after testing a few times. Last night just as we were ready to go to bed, Mom jumped up from her recliner and wanted to go out and see if we'd caught the raccoon. We all three bundled up and walked out to the garage, and lo and behold as the garage door opened, we saw two shiny eyes looking back at us from the trap. He wasn't such a badass in the cage, now, was he?

A friend at work who raises coon dogs and who coon hunts (note: they just hunt the coons with the dogs, they don't shoot the coons) came out this afternoon and hauled off the raccoon down to Spencer County where he will join many other raccoons. Let's hope he stays there. And even moreso, let's hope he doesn't have any relatives left in the garage. I guess we'll know tomorrow morning.