The Varmint Chronicles

Three o’clock in the morning the party started.

Ollie the Collie, who was with us, was very freaked out, running around in circles and wanting us to get out.

He did not like it.  Did not like it at all.  He was all in favor of us packing up and getting the hell out RIGHT NOW.  This new place is haunted!

Haunted!

There was a commotion going in the attic.  Just above our heads in the master bedroom where the vent is in the peak of the roof.

It sounded like someone was moving in.

Oh crap!  We’ve got a critter in the attic.

Ah…the joy of vacation homes.

What do sensible people do when they own a primary home that they don’t have enough time to take care of?  Buy another one, so they can have an extra home to not have time to take care of.

It’s all part of the deranged logic of the woman I married 37 years ago this week.

But I do as she says.  Because you can either be happy or right.

I choose neither.

And so we, and by ‘we’ I mean ‘she’, decided we should go down and visit said extra house on Cape Cod this weekend.

To see if it was still standing.

An interesting irony of owning a vacation house is that you seldom do any actual vacationing at it.

And by ‘you’ I mean ‘me’.

Once I get there and look around all the chores that haven’t been done for the months since the last time I was there come a-knocking on my psyche like a hoard of needy and unwanted school children waiting to be fed.

On this week’s trip…

The first thing we discovered is that we had a fairly robust mouse invasion.  Which was puzzling at first because there’s no food or water available in the house for them, so why would they come in?

We found the answer in the outside dryer vent.  (which to be honest I probably installed 20 years ago in an amateurish fit of pique and sweat).

There was no screen on the outside dryer vent.

Apparently, the mice had used it as a highway into the house.  A more perceptible human may have noticed that every time we turned on the dryer over the last couple years we may heard the musical rattle of acorns…

But, less perceptible humans we must be.

We didn’t notice.

This weekend we did notice.  A cursory walk through of the basement revealed the workings of an entire mouse civilization.  The insulation was filled with acorn bits.  Little mouse cafés had sprung up where little mouse waiters served fresh acorn bouillabaisse  with a smile, with their little berets cocked at an insouciant cant.

The exhaust tubing, which is that flexible foil ducting that runs from the back of the dryer, down through the floor, across the ceiling of the basement and out the side of the house, that was densely packed with discarded acorn shells.

The midden of many a great and joyous mouse feast.

They had eventually breached the foil ducting and carried their movable feast into the house proper.  Leaving the telltale signs of habitation throughout.

All of which had to be cleaned or discarded.

The foil ducting and vent had to be replaced.

That entry into the house is now fixed and they will have to hold their little soirees somewhere less beckoning.

As Bobby Burns, who’s friends called him ‘Bob the poet’ said – “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” – which you may have heard as “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

The thing is, if you’re not actively living in a house it gets taken over by the local wildlife.  The animals don’t know any better.  They think it’s just a big, square log they can hide in.  When you’re in the house, living and making a ruckus, (Can you describe the ruckus, sir?) they get scared off.

Because there is nothing scarier than an invasion of homo-habitus.

Vacation day one was spent up to my armpits in rodent tailings and duct tape.

Remind me again why we own another house?

We sorted it out.

The larger cause for concern was the bandit in the attic.

This is not my first rodeo with the trash pandas.  They have been in the attic of this house before.  Like I said, when you’re not there they claim squatter’s rights.

But first, before we get into the action, let’s talk about attic ventilation physics.

This old house school is in session.

Why, after spending so much time and energy (see what I did there?) insulating your house do you leave ventilation, aka “holes” in the roof of your house?

It’s all about moisture.  If you don’t have ventilation in the roof it acts like a greenhouse and traps moisture in the attic.

Some things are better moist, like hot bread fresh from the oven, and…well, other moist things, but not houses.

Houses should not be moist.

Without the vents every time the temperature changed you’d end up with a moldy house.

Our houses, especially up here in New England have large attics built with passive ventilation.

The intake vents are called soffit vents and they run along the eaves on the front and back near where the gutters hang.  The outflow vents are those larger rectangular vents with the louvers that are mounted on the ends of the house high up in the eaves in the peaks.

I realize I’ve just loaded you with a bunch of words you’ll never have to use unless you somehow end up on a version of home-repair Jeopardy.

By the way, Jeopardy is an interesting French loan word that is derived from ‘jeu parti’ Which means basically the end of the party.

But, to summarize you have to have vents in the roof if you want your house to stay non-moist.

Of course, these vents in the house peaks have louvers and screens built into them so the animals can’t crawl through.

In theory.

But raccoons are smart and dexterous vermin.  They have figured out that in these unoccupied houses they can bend the aluminum vent louvers, punch out the screens and have a new warm place to hang out.

Like I said, Rocky and I have done this dance in this house before.  Last time when they punched out the vents on the other side of the house I nailed up some wire mesh and that took care of that.

Back to the story.

It’s 3:00 AM and Ranger Ricky is doing the rumba in the attic.

So I go up there as part of my ‘vacation’ activities the next day   and nail up some wire mesh over the inside of that vent.  Easy peasy.  Just like last time.  Problem solved.

Except, is it?

Unfortunately for me it seems like the racoon wasn’t outside when I did my repairs.  Rocket was hiding in the crawl space over the sunroom.

I didn’t keep him out.

I trapped him in!

The plot thickens like adding flour to Irish stew.

Now what?

Now I have to trap him.

We go buy a have-a-hart trap and some sardines.  I have caught racoons at my actual house in the have-a-heart before.  I usually bait my traps with apples because I’m after woodchucks, but sometimes Rocky gets in there.

The recommended bait for trash bandits is stinkier fare…sardines, boiled eggs… that sort of thing.  Which makes me realize that they like the same food I do so maybe we can be friends?  Hang out together? Eat some sardines and watch the hockey?

We’d be like Bro’s until he chews my face off and gives me rabies and I turn into a brain eating zombie.

I set the trap in the attic and put the sardine tin in it.  I ate most of them, but left some for Rocky, because I’m that kind of guy.

For all you animal welfare people it’s not a cruel trap.

It’s basically a box with a door that close behind them when they walk over a pressure plate to get to the bait.  Then you carry them outside the house, to someone else’s property and let them go.

Which I would never do because it’s illegal to transport wild animals in Massachusetts.

And I would never do that.

Trap set.  Now it’s getting late in the weekend and we have to get back to our real house and our real lives having enjoyed as much mouse poop wallowing and gutter cleaning as possible.

We hopefully leave the armed trap and head out for brunch for a couple hours.

Alas – when I come back there is no critter in the trap.

My wife starts obsessing.

What if it’s not a racoon? What if it’s a skunk or a squirrel?

Too which I helpfully add, because I’m a helpful guy, what if it’s an escaped monkey from an organ grinder?  We’d have to play a tune, he’d dance and we could catch him in his cute little fez hat…

She is not amused…

One of us, meaning me, is going to have to drive back down during the week and check the trap.

Wednesday night Ollie and I make the long drive back down to the Cape.

I pull down the squeaky foldable stairs to the attic and…

No raccoon in the trap.

But on further inspection the sardines have been consumed and the tin is outside the trap, licked clean, but the trap didn’t get triggered.  Must be a sticky trap.  And Rocky didn’t even leave a thank you note.

But he’s still up there.  He wakes Ollie and I up at midnight trying to get out through the vent that I have unhelpfully sealed.

I re-bait the trap with boiled eggs and apples.  I pull it closer to the trap door so I can have it close at hand to rebait if I have to.

…

Varmint is usually thought to be an American word.

It’s actually Latin.

Varmint is an American bastardization of the English ‘vermin’ which is from the Latin Vermis meaning worms or larvae that infest food stuffs.

I finish work and take Ollie for a walk in the park.

…

When we come back, I don’t want to get my hopes up, but it sounds like there is activity up where I left the trap.

Climbing up the stairs I shine my iPhone flashlight into the dark attic and yes indeed I have the furry rump of the trash panda facing me form the sprung trap.

Rocky is not happy.

It’d understandable.  I sealed up his door, I ate most of the sardines and now I have him in a little metal cage.

This is the tricky part of operation ‘free rocky’.  Now I’ve got a 25 pound, angry wild animal in a trap.

I put Ollie in his crate.  His happy to oblige.  He doesn’t think any of this adventure is cool or interesting.  The hole thing just makes him anxious.

You ever tried to carry and angry, hissing, spitting, 25-pound wild animal down a set of retractable stairs from an attic?

I put Rocky in the back of my truck.  Another excellent reason to have a truck.  And drive to a dirt road about a mile away across the street.  I know, you’re supposed to put dome real distance between you and the critters, but I already sealed up the vent with hardware cloth, so he’s not getting back in, even if he can find his way back.

This is the trickiest, and most terrifying part of the catch and release process.  I have to open the trap with my hand and hope Rocky jumps out and runs into the woods.  And hope Rocky doesn’t turn around and chew my face off and turn me into a rabies infested brain eating zombie.  (It happens).

Thank the racoon gods Rocky is just as happy to part ways with me as I am to part ways with him.

I head home, quite pleased with myself to have avoided a $1,000 critter removal bill.  Feeling a bit manly.

Chuffed, you might say.

Ollie and I have a wonderful, uninterrupted full night of sleep.

…

Post Script.

The following night as I’m lying in bed reading with Ollie I hear the familiar sounds of Rocky climbing across the roof trying to bash his way into the vents again.

He can’t get in, because I fixed it, but that cheeky bastard found his way back and bashed up the aluminum louvers.

To quote a wise man who once said…

Now somewhere in the Black Mountain Hills of Dakota

There lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon

Etc.