It is always a good idea to pay attention to what your spouse is saying to you, especially if she says it repeatedly. Such was the case, recently, when my wife reported that she had been hearing something on the roof of the house. “What could be on the roof?”, I thought. Maybe a large bird had temporarily landed there?
She insisted that whatever it was that had been visiting our roof came at night and made scratching sounds, as if it had claws. I still dismissed this as perhaps a fiction of her imagination or a visitation in her dreams. Then, one day, while working in my office, I heard something too. It sounded like something had fallen. Perhaps something in one of the closets had shifted and fallen down? I would look into to it later. Which I never did.
Then came the night, actually early morning, whilst I was soundly asleep that my spouse awakened me, saying, “I hear it again”. Her tone of voice was such that I determined I had better take action, which I did, grabbing a flashlight and going out into the rain to examine the roof line – front and back sides of the house. Nothing.
Unable to get back to sleep I decided to read, seated in my recliner in the family room, thinking I might get drowsy again. It was then that I heard “something”. Only, I knew it wasn’t on the roof but in the attic. So, flashlight in hand, I pulled down the attic stairs and crept up above the garage to investigate. As I shined my light around a pair of eyes shined right back at me. Then those eyes scampered up the studs of the exterior wall – eyes belonging to a small racoon. It quickly made it’s way up and into the eaves of the house. I’m not sure who was more surprised by our early morning meeting, me or the racoon?
With heart racing and in disbelief, while wondering: “How did it possibly get inside the attic?”, I went to report my findings to the now trying to go back to sleep spouse. My report did nothing to encourage her resumption of slumber. Instead, we grappled with the fact that we had a critter in the attic. What now?
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danielcash 