June 21 DAILy-ness

Finally out of sheer frustration of not being able to rid the house of raccoons…. John arrived Sunday and that afternoon one of the kits fell out of the kitchen ceiling hatch… it was caught and put into a box… a second came down to look and John caught it and it too went into the box. They were released by the Mill Pond. Last night Ron (animal control) arrived with two live traps … I realize that I have been analyzing the raccoon movements, habits and various locations at all times of the days – Sunday evening for about 2 hours both John and I watch to see exactly how the mother racoon gets out of the house to forage at night for example.

Traps are set by Ron – one in the basement, one near the bird feeder. I tell Ron that she leaves the house by the large hole she has chewed under the eaves between 8.30pm and 9.30pm and returns around 2am by the hole under the foundation.  The other trap is baited in the basement. At 9.30pm, she is in the outside trap. She is then put into the basement and we wait. At about 2am I attempt to sleep – by 7am John catches the last (we hope) pup on the steps leading to the basement and we put it in with the mother. I call Ron and wait for pick up. Both will be killed

Sounds so cut and dry. But what is missing is both of our many sleepless nights as we hear chewing, squeaking, squabbling as we wait at open hatches and holes trying to figure out what to do. We were able to get the raccoons out in the past by sealing up the holes after mother and pups leave, but not this time. The pups stubbornly stay. We fear that if the raccoon chews a wire, the wood frame house may burn. Debris rains down on our heads from her daily excavations.

They will be shot with a 22 rifle. Ron is a frightening man – severe, serious, clean cut, a young looking grandfather at age 49 (clean living he says), ultra religious, pro-lifer – “The Devil is out there you know,” he challenges us. “Jesus got 39 stripes to save us from our sins. Prayer will save you from Hell…” He kills raccoons, beavers (some guy in Belleville eats them), rats, skunks, bears…. “They won’t let you kill them in Toronto so I know some guy who takes the ‘coons outside of the city limits and gasses them.” He comes today and takes the mother coon and her pup. I continue to ruminate – certainly not an intellectual affair. I have spent a night awake and tortured by all this. The contradictions I experience and I observe are huge. Ron, the pro-lifer, who kills animals all day – save me Jesus. I, an intellectual, who has sentimental attachments to animals – it is my birdfeeder and bath after all that provides the best environs for raccoons – and who now traps them and delivers them to death. And while I am awake all night waiting, I watch on video The Godfather parts 1, 2 & 3. Somehow there is some sublime appropriateness here. John and I sit later at sunrise – the last pup (we hope) now in the cage - and I tell him about the last hour of the film. As Corleon comments, "I have spent my life trying to extricate myself from the family business only to find that the higher I go – even to the Vatican - that the corruption is inescapable."