I think they made it in last night. Sometime around 3:30 this morning they really went to work on the eaves over the bedroom window. I looked out the window at one point, and there were two of them scratching and ripping at the loose board. They seemed unfazed by my sudden appearance at the window, and even seemed to stare back, imploring me to climb out and help them rip up the roof on the house.

In the way of background, last fall a family of raccoons (do they come in families?) moved into the attic of the house our flat is in. There was a loose board in the eaves and the managed to eek out a little doorway to the attic. Well, they just happened to pick the wrong week to move in because the landlord had the roof redone that weekend. While the roofers were up there, they patched the hole after having the occupants "removed." We felt a bit bad for the recently homeless family, but they keep outrageous hours, even by college town standards. Anyway, we didn’t hear from them this winter until two nights ago. Either it is the same family, or no one got around to taking our attic off of the real estate listings in the Raccoon Weekly. So we’ve got neighbors again

While there is a sense of pleasure associated with being thought of as good neighbors, the kind of folks you’d tunnel through the eaves to live with, the nightly disco party at 3 a.m. will probably get old quickly. However, perhaps is won’t be so noisy tonight since the majority of the construction work is done. I only hope they don’t decide to finish their basement or put on an addition. There is plenty of room up there already.

I also have fears that they’ll start subleasing some of the space. Raccoons are okay, but what if they let out space to some possums from the wrong side of town. Birds are also kind of messy and I just don’t know what they will do to the property values. Anyway, I hope our landlord screens the new occupants closely.

Anyhoo – I should have went to bed earlier because they started in right about the same time I was finally able to drift off. Needless to say, I’m strictly coffee-powered today.