You've got to be sh*tting me!

*Disclaimer:  Although I assure you that no animal was injured in the making of this blog entry, if you are a hardcore animal lover you may want to stop here.*

A few weeks ago as I sat in my living room watching TV, I looked out my patio door to see a big fat raccoon staring back in at me.  Startled, I thought out loud, "shouldn't you be sleeping?" as it was mid-day and raccoons are allegedly nocturnal.  I called my husband into the room and we watched for a while as the cute critter explored our BBQ and gazebo. 

But when he began to climb up the gazebo screen, ripping holes in it along the way, I became a little annoyed and asked my husband to do something about it.  My hubby left to get something to shoo it away with; since he was taking too long I took matters into my own hands and hurled a shoe in the direction of the raccoon, which was now perched on the roof of our gazebo.  He just stared back at me mockingly, waddled over to the shoe I had thrown, picked it up and began to chew on it.  My husband arrived with a broom - "How the hell did it get my shoe!?" - I shrugged.  When the raccoon was completely unfazed by my husband's shouts and somewhat amusing gestures with the broom, he resorted to poking at it with the broom handle.  Again, totally fearless, the little bugger just grabbed a hold of the other end in the strangest game of tug-of-war I've ever witnessed. 

Since we were clearly dealing with either the boldest (and perhaps smartest) raccoon ever, or one infected with rabies, we decided to leave it be and hope it would leave on it's own. 
Perhaps the biggest mistake we've made.  Ever.  Because now we had let it win the first power struggle in what would soon become a small nightmare.

The next morning I was leaving the house and was greeted at the front door by a steaming pile of poop.  A little gift from our new friend.  Lovely.  My husband cleaned it up and disinfected the porch to make sure there was no odour left.  But again the next morning - not one, but two piles of poop on my porch.  "What the f**k is this!?  Is this some kind of sick joke?"  No my friends, it was not.  

Later that day my husband informs me that the little bastard hasn't just been defecating on the porch, but has left a nice pile of poop around the side of the house too.  This was not funny anymore. Not at all.  After we cleaned up all the mess and did some research to determine why the little vermin was so attracted to our house, we cleaned the BBQ and made sure that we weren't leaving any food or garbage where he could smell it.  And then we didn't see him for a few days.  We thought we had taken care of it.  Until my husband finds yet another ginormous pile of poop at the side of the house.  "That's impossible!" he exclaimed, "That shit wasn't there yesterday - I checked.  There's no way one little raccoon can shit that much in one day!" 

Initially stumped, it suddenly occurred to me.  The pile of poop was right at the bottom of one of the downspouts from the eaves trough, and it had rained heavily through the night.  That's right folks - that little    f*cker was shitting on my roof.            This is war.

...to be continued...