Home disimprovement

Ordinarily I wouldn’t promote (or even much notice) a TV commercial. But this one from Allstate really resonated with me.

Dean “Mayhem” Winters, spokes-disaster for the insurance company, absolutely captured the destruction of raccoons in your attic.

The reason I know this is that my house in Virginia seemed to have some secret symbols marked on it that translated to “Procyonidae Lying-in Hospital—All Are Welcome”. There was a small gap right at the junction of the rear and side of the roof, just pregnant-raccoon sized, apparently.

And, having the entire attic to birth her litter, where did Mama R choose to create her nest? Smack above my bed. Not a word of lie.

And you’ll recall that raccoons are nocturnal. Night after night, rustling noises as Mama popped out to the procyonid 7-Eleven and came back to her brood, who peep-peep-peeped a lot more than you’d have expected.

I didn’t know what it was right away, so one evening I climbed up to the attic and picked my way along the rafters until I got to the approximate spot of all the rustling and peeping. Mama had hidden them well, though—it wasn’t until I picked up a piece of insulation that I found the little clutch of teeny-tiny raccoons.

And along the way I also encountered a lot of ripped-up padding. Exactly as in the Allstate commercial.

I left the babies untouched and went downstairs to have a think. And a couple of hours later I went back up with my camera—thought I should have proof when telling my raccoon tale. Only just at I got my head and shoulders through the hatch there was a furious hissing/chittering from the front of the attic. The babies were in the back and I was between Mama and them.

I apologized profusely, crept back down the ladder and replaced the hatch.

That night Mama moved her family out, probably pretty pissed off at me.

Well, I wasn’t that happy with her, either. Seriously—take another look at that commercial. It’s amazing the destruction one little critter can cause before you close up its egress.

And, BTW—you can get squirrels out of your attic by tossing mothballs around. Sometimes a lot of mothballs, so that you don’t have to worry about moths in the rooms closest to the attic. And I know this because…well, never mind.