So we do have something living under the cottage. Not in the same area as where the plumbers were but underneath our bedroom. We just loved being woken up at around 4 am by what sounded like something was playing around with the copper pipes. Great.
D called the wildlife animal control guy again and was lucky he was able to come out the same day. Now we have a trap set -- For a raccoon. We will be keeping an eye on it until we leave to go back home and he will take it from there. The next step will be to seal the entrance once the culprit is caught.
Each visit by our wildlife guy costs $50 and he estimates the rest of it including clean up will be in the $400 range. I'm not concerned about the cost but I asked him why now after 9 years of being intruder free? He didn't have an answer for me. We joked that the bacon we eat must smell too good.
We went out shopping for a new smoke detector, plumbing antifreeze as well as a radio today. The radio in combination with a timer is supposed to irritate the animal encouraging it to leave. We couldn't find a suitable option so left it for tomorrow.
When we got back an idea came to D. We didn't really need a radio. Why don't I play my violin in the bedroom? Surely it would aggravate the raccoon enough for him to want to leave! I rolled my eyes at him but couldn't disagree with the concept. So practice I did. We also made a point of walking loudly on the hardwood floors. We'll see if it amounted to anything tonight.
Thirteen years ago I put my house in Boise on the market. That night, I discovered an extended family of squirrels living in my attic crawl space. It took three weeks to catch them all with a non-lethal trap and set them free in an area we hoped they would enjoy. I wish you luck with your tenant.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kathy! By law they can only relocate our guest 10 km away but our wildlife guy says his odometer is a "little wonky" so we trust he will do what he can. We've been told raccoons can find their way back from 30 km away.
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