"It certainly entertained the gapers."

Well, the furnace guy collected a new story this afternoon. We told him we needed someone to go into the crawl space under the house and check the ductwork because we know we've got a hole or break or something there from the raccoon. We told him the story and at first he just laughed in disbelief. "Raccoon?!?"

You see, a year ago August we had gone to bed w/ the kitchen skylight open. In the middle of the night, a juvenile raccoon, presumably smelling whatever we'd had for dinner that night, came walking across our roof toward the source of the aroma and fell into our kitchen because the skylight screen wasn't designed to hold any weight. "Then up on the roof there arose such a clatter, we sprang from our bed to see what was the matter." As we ran from the bedroom into the kitchen, the raccoon ran from the kitchen into the bedroom. We immediately shut the door and called Animal Control. I gotta hand it to them, we had an Animal Control officer there at 4 a.m., probably called from a sound sleep, no more than 45 minutes after the arrival of our unwelcome guest. We told him how said guest had made his entrance, whereupon our officer carefully slipped into the bedroom with his cage at the ready. Guess what? NO visitor! AC officer and Chief moved the bed (and all the shoes and sweater boxes stashed under same) to find the little rotter had pried up a floor vent and crawled into our ductwork! We never did smell it, so we know it didn't die in there. Chief noticed the next time he did yard work that a slatted ventilation grill in the crawl space had a section broken out. Given that and other evidence, we assume our probably rabid little friend took advantage of a join in the ductwork to make a break for freedom and eventually make its way into the crawlspace and thence into the neighborhood at large.

The next couple of times we had the system checked, I tried to get the tech to check for a break in the ductwork but they never did. I think this 3rd time was the charm; Chief even showed the tech where he'd nailed mesh over the grill to keep the critters out, because they've pulled down some of the insulation under the house for nesting or other, more nefarious purposes. Someone's supposed to call us tomorrow to arrange to repair the ductwork. Good thing - with all the gloom-and-doom forecasts about how heating prices are going to shoot up this winter, we DON'T want to be heating the neighborhood, or even the crawlspace!