After church, we drove up to Newmarket, a bedroom community just north of Toronto, to visit Charlene's parents.
On the way, we heard news that a bear was loose in Newmarket. A bear! We drove by the scene and saw police cars and a vacated hot dog stand but that was it.
They could have captured that bear in no time if they had kept the hot dogs cooking. That's bear bait.
The rest of the day, a helicopter circled overhead. I read this morning that they eventually captured that bear at night.
We didn't care. We were doing battle with our own private critters.
Turns out that a couple of raccoons had taken up residence in the chimney of the house in Newmarket. This isn't a problem if you break the law (you have to be nice to raccoons these days) or if you pay someone to remove the raccoons for you ($600-$1,000). It's a bit of a challenge if you decide to do it yourself.
Who's smarter, raccoons or humans? I was wondering for a while there.
We tried all kinds of ways to get them to climb back out of the chimney. Eventually we capped off the chimney and settled for the fact that they were coming down, not up.
Brooms ready, and a box to catch them, we got them out with a little persuasion. They were actually a lot less ferocious than I had feared. We got them safely outside and reclaimed that chimney for ourselves.
Last night we celebrated our victory with Chinese food. It was good, but it would have been a lot better if my mind hadn't kept seeing those beady raccoon eyes while eating.
Update: Left behind - We thought we had them all but one was left behind. Created a bit of a disaster last night. The saga continues.
Depending on the Chinese food restaurant, you may have been eating his cousin.... oh never mind, that is just cats.
It reminds me of listening to Spencer Burke tell me about possums in California. I told him that we don't have possums here but Saskatoon is crawling with rabin wolverines. He believed me (I think) until I told him about how they killed a couple of cops and stole their cop car.
Wendy and I enjoy going north to Waskesiu and renting these log cabins. While really nice, they were built before plumbing so they added the bathrooms on the ouside the of structure. I am always paranoid about checking the door when I am done as I am afraid if I leave it unlocked, a bear, raccoon, or a moose will confront me the next time I have to go to the bathroom and will be in a really bad mood.
Newmarket isn't that Liberal riding now? ;)
Sorry couldn't resist.
"Who's smarter, raccoons or humans?" I guess that depends on who the humans are! ;) What I would give to have video footage of that event!