After my last update (earlier today), I thought I'd mention the lovely thing we have to deal with in this old house.

Every year, we have a raccoon that has her litter in our attic and interstitial spaces between the walls and floors.

Her general "home base" is in between the ceiling of our bedroom and the upstairs floor. This means we get a lot of "thumping" noises as her little ones get bigger (spring and early summer). Currently, they are "armful" size, still cute, but definitely larger. And they like to wrestle each other. Most years she has 3 to 4 kits a year. Our upstairs living room window looks out on the roof of the lower portion of the house (where you can step out onto the roof throught the window). When the kits come out they usually come to the window to peer into the house. So we've seen them at all stages of growth. There have been years when we thought the mom had delivered only 2 kits, but then saw the third later on. At least one year it was obvious #3 was the runt of the litter.

This year is a "banner" year. ~ oh. joy. ~ She had FIVE babies! And they all seem to be the same size now, so no runts. There has been a lot more wrestling noises, bumps, and thumping noises. And one side effect we hadn't considered before...the smell!

We live in a 121 year old house and my husband's and my bedroom is downstairs, in the mostly unliveable part--no heat (PTL for electric blankets in the winter) and a window unit A/C. The walls in our room were papered back in the 30s, most likely and my husband had to remove the paper to make sure it was not harboring any bugs, when we decided to start sleeping down there. The walls are made up of planks/boards of wood and many have small gaps between the planks. This goes for the ceiling also. After we moved ourselves down there to sleep, my husband made me a canopy for my bed--it's made of white plastic sheeting and looks rather romantic. It fulfills a much more essential job than just looking romantic, though. It shields us from the debris that falls from the ceiling as well as some liquid that seeps down. Granted (thankfully) it's been several years since I saw any liquid in my canopy, nevertheless I'm very grateful for its existence!  We've not seen any urine this year, but there is most definitely a very musky/musty urine-like scent, esp. if the bedroom has been closed up & un-air-conditioned for the day.

It just doesn't help my overall outlook, I can tell you that... It has been fun to watch the babies outside our window, but the thumps, scratching in the night, and the odor are things I think we could all just live without.