difficult child's night visitor!

[LittleDudesMom]

So, per my usual schedule, I woke at 3:15 to take my nightly trip to the facilities. As I was crawling back in bed and pulling up the covers, difficult child came barreling out of his room.

"difficult child?"

"Something's at my door!"

"What?"

"Something's at my door and I'm not imagining it mom!"

"What, your outside door?"

(we live in a big old house and there is a porch on the second floor that runs across the back of the house -- there are two doors leading into the house from the second floor - one in difficult child's room and one in my office/sleeping porch. We took the stairs down when we put an addition on 16 years ago so there is no way to get up there for a human unless you have a ladder - the roof to the addition, which is about level with the porch, is butted on one side by the trellis over my patio - every now and again I see squirrels on the trellis, which means they can get to the roof. There is an old wooden screen door on the exterior of difficult child's door)

"Yes, I heard the screen door open and now there is something at the door!!"

So I hop out of the bed and grab the phone, you know, just in case.....

We go to the bathroom window, which looks out on the porch and can't see anything. We both creep into his bedroom and hear something scratching at the door!

Neither one of us has the guts to go up to the door at that point even though it's a really great old solid door. We decide to go into the sleeping porch, open that door and look out the screen door to see if we can tell what's out there. No such luck, can't see a thing because of the angle.

We venture back into difficult child's room. I'm beginning to feel brave knowing there is not a serial killer crouched out there.....

"difficult child, go and get the little mag light on my night table."

He brings the light and I creep up to this door (3-over-3 windows on the top). I see that the exterior screen door is open about a foot. I peek down and "Dang", there's a raccoon starring up at me!!!!!!!! How the heck did that thing get up on the porch....

So difficult child takes a metal pole, that he keeps under his bed for moments such as these and bangs the door a few times and off goes the raccoon - we didn't see how he got down, but he sure is not up there now that the sun is up!

difficult child decides he can't sleep after that and goes on down stairs for the day. I crawled under my covers and slept an hour and half - being a hunter is tiring business!

Thought you all would enjoy the story this morning. I will go out and shut the screen door so difficult child won't angst tonight!!!!

Sharon

 

[TerryJ2]

Oh, the old raccoon-hunter-in-the-middle-of-the-night story! LOL! Whatever you do, do NOT encourage difficult child to feed the raccoon, thinking that it will make him less afraid. But you already knew that. And now you know when he's telling the truth. (difficult child, not the raccoon.)

 

[busywend]

Oh my! I can imagine the racing hearts! Glad you are safe!

 

[buddy]

Oh wow!
Q would never sleep again.
I hope Mr raccoon moved away!

 

[InsaneCdn]

I'm glad you actually found out what it was... and that difficult child was right.
difficult child kids need that kind of validation.
We, on the other hand, don't need the adrenalin rush!

 

[BusynMember]

That would spook me and my kids out to no end. I don't like critters that may carry rabies.

One night a bat got into our room and I slept downstairs for a few months. Ew!!!!

 

[Jody]

Racoons are cute from afar, once they decide they are at home, they are hard to get rid off. The hissing they do is scary to me, when they get mad, or want you out of there way. They are cute, but definately not in the middle of the night scratching on my door. I probably would have died laughing though, when I get scared I laugh hysterically, craziest thing.

 

[Bunny]

Yikes!! That would freak me out, too! Did the raccoon come back again?

 

[recoveringenabler]

Great story Sharon, thanks, I guess we're all been in similar night time scary places.............so easy to relate....

 

[Wiped Out]

Yikes!!!! You both are much more brave than me!

It does remind me of the time when difficult child was younger and we were at sister in law's house. difficult child heard something in the garbage can when we were outside. We told him to leave it around-yeah difficult child listen to us? NOPE! He opened it and saw a raccoon peering up at him! He sure put the cover back on that fast!

 

[LittleDudesMom]

As it got closer I realized it was one of those skunks and I hightailed it into the house!

Apparently the racoon didn't come back last night.....difficult child was tired from being up so early yesterday morning and then coming home from school and then going to work for five hours, that he hit the sack early and is still sleeping!

 

[Mattsmom277]

Last fall we had a family of about six raccoons somehow drawn to our back deck. Turn lights on and bang door and they didn't run. Oh no. They climbed each other and groveled at the door to come in! They sure are cute but preferably not so close to home. Glad your neighborhood rascal wasn't back last night.

 

[nerfherder]

Of COURSE I have a story.

DEX and I had moved to Davis, CA. We were renting a bedroom from a friend while waiting for our apartment to open.

Of course DEX had his computer stuff taking up almost as much room as the rest of us, but at the time I was ok with it. PEC and Kiddo were 8 years younger and thus smaller and better behaved. It was summer.

Late one night I heard this clicking sound. I thought it was arcing from one of the computer power supplies - a dangerous sound because it means nasty sparky failure is close at hand. So, in the near dark, without my contacts (being terribly nearsighted) I'm literally nosing around, trying to triangulate in on the clicking, and looking for a flash of arcing, not seeing anything...

...and find myself nose to nose with an OPOSSUM, who's just squatting there CLICKING at me.

Having heard horror stories about rabies (all untrue, possums are immune, wrong body temp) and having to rescue a possum-savaged cat which was then euthanized (true) I was not in the mood to be charitable toward wildlife.

DEX and I eventually got over our well-conditioned fears and managed to scootch the possom (who went very reluctantly) out the screen door. We tried to get him out of the parking lot and he refused.

A couple nights later, he climbed over the desktop tower DEX had set against the open sliding door, and came clicking at us again, this time LICKING MY TOES. I am not making this up. By then I'd read enough to know, oh yeah, opossums have 50 teeth in their jaws, the most of any currently living mammal.

This time we watched, and it appeared he was blind and crippled - and was looking for "his" bowl of food. Yes, that's right.

After doing more reading, I figured out he actually *was* blind and crippled. This is a common outcome of humans finding a "cute" baby possum and feeding it whatever it wants - which is WRONG. They have fairly specific dietary needs. He was an accepted sort of pet at the apartment complex, and while we kept him out (he was hitting on the cats' food which upset them rather a lot) he was a common visitor for quite some time.

So yes. A possum licked my toes. (shudder)

 

[LittleDudesMom]

Nerfherder, I want to say, "oh, poor little guy", but I hate opossums! Not sure I would have been as nice......

Sharon