An Uninvited Christmas Visitor
*Note to my readers: If you have been following this blog, you know that my posts are usually advice or review driven in hopes of making another mom’s life easier but this month I decided I wanted to do something a little different. I hope this story from my childhood makes you laugh or at least brings a smile to your face. Something is always bound to go wrong during the holidays but with any luck you can make the best of it. Sometimes the things that seem like they might totally ruin your holiday become the most cherished stories in years to come. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I wish all of you the best and hope that none of you have any unexpected and/or unwelcome guests!
The holidays were fast approaching and my sister and I couldn’t wait. We both loved Christmas and everything that it stood for. Even though we are four and a half years apart in age, growing up we were best friends (most of the time!) I was in the fourth grade and was excited for winter break from school. My sister was in preschool and had an obsession with Christmas crafts – especially those involving sugar! She even ATE my gingerbread house that I had made in girl scouts when no one was looking! (But that’s a story for another post.) Each day after school we would run down to our finished basement to play. It was an awesome play space and as long as we kept things relatively tidy my parents let us do whatever we wanted. We had so much fun down there from playing with our Barbie dolls to playing “school” and pretending to go grocery shopping and playing “house.”
Occasionally my mom would come down to check on us or to see what we were doing. One day (about a week or two before Christmas) she came down to see what we were up to and noticed that the drop ceiling tiles were a little off kilter. (She’s a bit of a perfectionist and even though it was just our basement play space she wanted everything to be in its place.) “Girls,” she said, “please do not throw things at the ceiling OK? It’s messing up the tiles.” My sister and I looked at each other – neither of us had thrown ANYTHING at the ceiling. We just shrugged and went on with what we were doing. That night my mom asked my dad to please go down and adjust the tiles. He wasn’t too thrilled but did it anyway. A few days later we were playing in the basement again and my mom again came to check on us. Upon noticing that the tiles were messed up again she yelled at us to “stop throwing balls at the ceiling!” We only had a couple of balls and we hadn’t even been playing with them. We told her that we hadn’t thrown anything but she insisted that we had to be lying because she could see that the tiles were a mess. My dad didn’t want to fix the tiles that night so they stayed slightly askew. My sister and I didn’t think much of it except that we were tired of getting yelled at all the time for something that we didn’t do! I even remember asking my sister in private if maybe she HAD thrown something when I wasn’t looking but didn’t want to admit it. She was mad that I asked and asked me the same thing. Neither of us had a clue what had happened to the ceiling tiles.
A few days went by. We were again playing in the basement when my mom came down again. She was watching us play when she noticed that our cat (who was also hanging out with us) was staring at the ceiling. She called the cat and tried to figure out what she was looking at but my cat seemed to be staring at nothing and seemed transfixed. Later my mom admitted that she thought she heard something but my dad said that she was nuts. My mom was always “hearing something.” She has crazy good hearing!
Another day went by with my cat acting strangely and my mom “hearing something.” She finally convinced my dad to take down a ceiling tile and take a look after my sister and I went to bed one night. After all, she said, he needed to fix the tiles again anyway. My dad thought she was losing her mind but he reluctantly agreed to do as she asked. He got up on a ladder and took down one tile. Using a flashlight he peered into the darkness above the drop ceiling and was surprised to see another pair of eyes looking back at him from across the tiles – a raccoon. No wonder our cat had been cautiously stalking the ceiling for weeks! Unsure of what to do next my dad replaced the tile – in hopes that the raccoon wouldn’t get into the REST of the house and called animal control the next morning.
Unfortunately, since it was only a few days before Christmas, animal control didn’t really want to be bothered. They advised my parents to blast music in the basement for a couple of days to persuade our uninvited house guest to leave the way he came in hopes of a quieter home. Willing to try anything my parents did as they were told and set up my boom box. For two days they blasted a rock and roll station hoping that our visitor wasn’t a fan. To their dismay, apparently for this raccoon…. Rock and roll turned out to be his jam…
It was Christmas Eve by then and while in other people’s homes, “not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse” in our house, our visitor had made himself right at home in our basement ceiling and it seemed that he had no intention of leaving. It was a cold and snowy winter in our suburb of Chicago and he had decided that our basement ceiling was the perfect home for winter. Not only that but animal control made it pretty clear that they had no intention of coming! Since the next day was Christmas I think my parents called a truce with the raccoon and let it be until Christmas was over.
But its reprieve was short lived. The following night my dad decided to take matters into his own hand. He decided that he was going to catch the raccoon and remove it from the house himself! He climbed up on the ladder armed with a can of tuna hoping to entice the raccoon close enough to catch him. When that idea failed he tried systematically taking out one ceiling tile at a time hoping to corner the creature. Using a broom he tried to control where the raccoon scampered but this raccoon was pretty smart and was hell bent on keeping his ceiling home. Needless to say… my dad was up ALL night attempting to catch the raccoon with no success. The next morning I remember venturing down to the basement to get something and was greeted with the sight of what looked like flour all over the basement floor. “What happened down there?!” I asked my dad. His response? He didn’t want to talk about it. He was NOT in a good mood. Turns out it wasn’t flour after all but dust from all of the ceiling tiles being taken down and replaced repeatedly all night as my dad chased our visitor around. I’m pretty sure my mom was equally displeased as she was going to have to clean up the mess!
Finally after another desperate phone call, animal control agreed to come out and remove the raccoon for us. After informing us that my parents would need to pay a “holiday inconvenience charge” in addition to the regular rate because it was between the Christmas and New Year holidays, the burly animal control officer trudged down our basement stairs to check out the situation herself armed with a long pole with a loop on the end and a metal cage. My sister and I were dying to go down and watch but to our disappointment our parents wouldn’t allow it. Looking back, I can’t say I blame them. I would have done the same as a parent now myself.
A short while later, the woman from animal control reappeared from our basement holding her pole and her trap but the trap was no longer empty – instead it now held a rather large, and for lack of a better term, pissed off raccoon. It glared at us from the confines of the cage as if daring us to poke him. Thankfully, my sister and I had the good sense to stay a safe distance away. The animal control officer described the creature as rather “feisty” and told us that our uninvited guest was teenage male who had gotten in thanks to a small hole in the wood framing of our house which essentially connected our house to the foundation. (I’m sure that there is a construction term for this part of the house but that’s definitely NOT my department!) In any case, the raccoon had found the small hole and literally chewed and clawed at it until it was large enough for him to fit through. She then proceeded to tell my parents that we were lucky to have noticed him in there before he brought in the rest of his family. As she told us that she would re-home the animal my parents just looked at her as if she was nuts – but as long as its new home wasn’t in OUR home they were satisfied.
We had survived the holiday with an uninvited guest. At the time my parents were sure that it was one of the worst holidays that we would have but honestly, I don’t remember it being bad at all! Haha, now – approximately 20 years later, it’s actually one of my favorite Christmas stories. After the whole ordeal was over, my parents had the hole repaired and thought that they had closed the chapter on uninvited animal house guests – until they moved when I was in college and discovered one spring that they had bats in the attic. But that’s a story for another post.
Image Courtesy of National Geographic