The Saga Continues

At this point I just have to move past the fact that baby raccoons have died.

I'm always giving human feelings to things that don't necessarily have them.

Rocks, for example, when I was a kid.

That's another story.

(and, no, it wasn't a pet rock)

But something about the behavior of this mother raccoon just feels like more than instinct to me...

even if that's all it is.

And it's hard for me to get over the fact that her babies are dead.

Although it is possible that she came back and took the ones that survived.

I hope she did.

But now we are trying to deal with the aftermath of the whole thing.

Dead animals in the chimney.

I've gotten bits of advice here and there.

And my husband keeps telling me to start a fire in the fireplace.

So today I called a chimney cleaner and asked what it would cost to remove dead raccoons from my chimney.

I told him that we had reached the point of my basement smelling very bad...so, yeah.

The good news is that I know what's in there.

Apparently lots of people have no idea that they even have raccoons until they have a serious problem on their hands

(not that my problem hasn't reached the level of serious...because it has)

Anyway, they don't clean them out.

It's too late.

It's too messy and smelly and, well, it ruins their cleaning equipment if they try.

I have to...

light a fire

Yes, the husband was right.

Except he was thinking a fire for a couple of hours.

Nope.

I have to light a fire and keep it going (in the summer mind you) for as long as I can stand it...

and keep doing it for 7-10 days.

His exact words, "Don't underestimate how long to have a fire. Overestimate."

If I don't do this I will not only have  a very bad smelling house

I will have maggots and flies in my house.

And raccoons will smell that there were raccoons here in the past and keep coming back.

So...

I sent Carter down to start a fire

 and he could actually hear the flies buzzing in the chimney!

That's a lot of flies.

He successfully started the fire and we now have it going strong.

And only one fly escaped into the house during the starting of the fire.

Yay!

The good news is that my house smells less like dead animal now and more like campfire.

I'll take it.