The Critter in the Chimney

I experienced real fear last night around 10pm. Our house was nice and quiet and then we heard something outside our bedroom window. Many of you haven't been to our house, but there is a deck that wraps around our house and leads to both Charlotte and Emilia's bedroom. A while ago I decided to place wooden bars in the windows so no one could break into the girls bedrooms. It would be very easy to do since the windows are waist high.

The commotion sounded like someone was trying to break into our house. I was amazed at how calm I was considering how scared I really was. Corey grabbed a golf club and headed outside. I grabbed the phone, flipped on the lights and said a prayer someone wasn't trying to break-in. The noise continued but we couldn't pin-point where it was coming from. A few minutes later we realized it was a critter in our downstairs chimney. The chimney runs between our room and Emilia's. It sounded like she might come through a vent so we woke Emilia up. While I was not amused by this late night arrival, Emilia was so excited. We weren't sure what it was. So Emilia offered up her ideas. "Mommy, it could be a turtle, or a racoon, or a sheep or a bear or a bird." Whatever it was, she wanted to see it and feed it and name it. We were able to get her back to bed a few hours later.

This morning, we realized it was a raccoon. Department of Wildlife Resources explained to Corey it's probably a mama coon who is nesting to have babies. Emilia will likely be thrilled by this, we however, are not!