Wednesday night we heard some scratching above our bed and thought we had a squirrel in the attic. Sure enough, when I checked, there she was on the roof, shoving sticks and leaves in through the vent. I didn't think it was something we could secure ourselves, so yesterday morning I looked in the phone book for someone who could come and cap the opening. My expert came right away saying squirrels can be very dangerous because they will chew wires and cause a fire hazard. Up we went into the attic (it is a trap door with ladder type stairs that you pull down). Almost the first thing John said was, "hmmm, this doesn't look like squirrel droppings." Oh oh. Within 5 minutes he had found a possum in a nest in one corner, a bunch of bats hanging from the rafters, a snake (who apparently would only be up there because of all the food opportunities - squirrels and bats) and tracks in the insulation like little highways the squirrels use to run around. He then inspected all around the house (oh, did I mention there is a possum living under the house too?) and is going to spend the next several days patching up entry points, putting new caps on the chimneys and installing some sort of trap door that will allow the bats to fly out but not back in. He promised to remove the possums and snake today. Total cost: over $2000! To be honest, if he had said $6,000, I would have said "We'll sell the car, just do it!" He is also going to remove all the, uh, excrement and soiled insulation. What a job. I'd charge an arm and a leg if I had his job too.
John is a really interesting guy. I asked him how he got into this line of work, and it turns out he was trained as a Paramedic in the Navy. For several years his job was to go into places where there were new deployments (mostly the Middle East and former Soviet Bloc) and collect all the spiders, bugs, bats and birds, collect blood from camels and goats, all in order to find out what problems might arise if a soldier was bitten. When he left the Military, he decided he didn't want to work as a Paramedic dealing with car accidents and other such emergencies, so started a business doing wild animal capture. He is full of stories of rabid bobcats in crawl spaces and racoons under sinks. For some reason, I find the possum the most unsettling, so I am glad it will be gone tonight.
And to think it used to bother me to find a spider in the shower.
