[animal house]

It seems that all of the animals in the neighborhood want to live in our house. Of course being in the country and living in such an old house I would expect to have the occasional mouse infestation. But that isn't even the beginning

Let me start counting what I know has lived in our house... We had a Raccoon family living in the attic above our Kitchen. In 2008 when I started living in the house part time and before any of the remodeling was done I heard banging in the kitchen. there was what appeared to be a growing stain in the corner over the cabinets. I peeled away the paper to see how bad the damage was and guess what, there was already a small hole there behind the paper. only a few days after removing the paper I realized that the hole was quickly getting larger. One night I heard some general banging above the kitchen and walked in just to see a small black hand remove itself from the hole in my ceiling. I don't mind raccoons, but I don't want them living in my attic. That's just no good. I sealed the hole temporarily with the cover of a mildewed encyclopedia that was still left in the house. Later that spring some men from St. Johns Builders came up and did a lot of work on the house including installing a new ceiling in the kitchen since the plaster lathe was so bowed. That summer the gutters on the house were also replaced and those workers graciously blocked the vent that the raccoons had used to enter that attic over the kitchen.

Next, I noticed that we had groundhogs living under the crawl space under the dining room (formerly our living room) Nate dispatched of a couple groundhogs that summer as well. I still have the hole to fill in the foundation, but I haven't noticed any more activity recently.

Last winter we had mice running around our house and they got into our lazy susan pantry, so that needed to be cleaned and sanitized. I used GoodStuff and steel wool to block any cracks and crevices that they may have used, and we haven't had any more problems since that.

About 2-3 months ago when my Jeep was out of commission mice entered and chewed on the crumbs that were on the floor, ate a shirt I had left in there and left lots of black rice everywhere. I set a living trap for them and caught a chipmunk instead. Unfortunately the chipmunk was too strong for that trap and partially was able to remove himself but then got stuck. I thought that he was dead but after I removed him, he started breathing again, and I let him loose next to a pine tree. Later when I checked on him before the dogs got let out, he was gone. I haven't used that live trap in the garage again because I'm afraid of that happening again, so we still have mice in our garage.

Two nights ago I heard some scratching in our walls and investigated to find mice in our crawl space under our kitchen and porch. I used the live trap in the crawl space and successfully caught and released three cute little brown and white field mice. I let them go next to Larry's garage (jk, jk) I let them go in the back corner of the camps property, at least a half mile from any building.

Lastly, the whole reason for me writing all this.... we have a Cardinal that insists that he fly into all the windows on both floors of our house. He REALLY REALLY likes the kitchen window though. I've decided that it must be because Virgil had a feeder that actually attached to that window, and was a concave shape that actually allowed the birds to sit inside the house and eat their food while you watched. I have installed a hanging feeder in another location, but he doesn't seem interested in it at all. *chirp* BANG *chirp* BANG *chirp* BANG *chirp* BANG