Critters and Creatures of All Sorts

For some reason or another, our house attracts all sorts of critters/pests. And I am talking about attracting them to come INSIDE of the house. This has been going on since we moved in and the list of things we have "boarded" just keeps getting longer. So far we have had: an infestation of carpenter ants, bats, mice, spiders, Japanese lady beetles, numerous wasp/hornet/ yellow jacket nests, birds (both alive and dead) in our chimneys, soffits, and attic--and I am sure there are others that I can't think of right now. We now have another species to add to the list--here's the story:

Last night around 6:30, I was getting ready to go out to do a short errand. While in the bathroom, I heard noises. Thinking they were coming from our neighbor's I investigated to see what they were doing. Turns out, I could hear the noises in the bathroom, sewing room, and pantry--coming from inside the wall. That is when I knew we had a new "tenant." Of course, K was on night shift, so I called him at work when I returned home. By this time, the noises had stopped, but I was not under the illusion that the critter had left my house. K said he would check on what was going on when he got home this morning and that is where it stayed all night. Considering the noises were so loud and consisted of scratching/gnawing sounds, I figured we had a chipmunk or squirrel inside the wall--K thought we had a bird.

We have a walk-out basement with stairs leading down from the outside. Over the stairs we have a shelf built for storage. Being the smart man that he is, K figured our creature was somewhere trapped in the stairwell, so he first went and looked into the door window to see what was there. Sure enough, when he shined the light onto the shelf, there were the two shiny black eyes of a raccoon looking back at him. Upon further investigation, he found out she was on her nest with her babies--all four of them. The noise I had heard was the raccoon trying to dig further into the house to get into the attic. Try as K might, she had no intention of leaving her comfy accommodations--except for trying the attic once more--until K pounded on the wall from in the attic. This caused mama to leave and we haven't seen her since. Of course, we left the door open all day so that she could rescue her babes, but it just didn't happen. It finally got so late--K had to go to work--that we couldn't wait for mama any longer. So the decision was made: the babes had to be dragged outside--with their nest--and hopefully mama will come back for them. I checked on them about an hour ago and she still hadn't returned.

I guess an argument could be made that we acted cruelly, but we didn't know what else to do. First, we couldn't just leave these critters in our house--the basement stairs lead directly into our living space. Second, we couldn't find any kind of wildlife rescue organization here in our area. And third, our local Humane Society is run by a bunch of wackos, so they were definitely out of the question. We figured we would let nature take its course--whether that means mama rescues her babes or another animal has a meal, so be it. Nature isn't always pretty.