While my heart goes out to those poor folks who are probably wondering when their myriad of problems are going to end, the whole thing did remind me of a funny story regarding my own hurricane-induced rodent problems.
After Hurricane Charley walloped Charlotte County, I was facing nightly attacks on my trash cans by raccoons. Raccoons aren’t very polite. They don’t root around in your garbage until they find what they want and leave. Instead, they overturn the bins and scatter trash all over your lawn so that all of your nosey neighbors can see what sort of naughtiness you’ve been up to and are trying to dispose of evidence of. After a few days of this I invested in a havahart trap, because I don’t like to kill things.
A neighbor suggested I put some cat food, a big hit amongst raccoons, in the trap. I set the trap with a can of nine lives inside and went to bed.
My wife was a voracious reader who kept odd hours. Some days I would get up for work and she would still be up reading. As I was sleeping, like the dead as always, she heard a commotion outside and went to look at the trap. Apparently, cats also like cat food (who knew?) and we caught ourselves an orange tabby. The poor thing was scared to death and could not be coaxed out of the trap. My wife found a couple of sticks and rigged the door open so it could come out once she was gone and it was more comfortable. She went to bed and didn’t think much else of the matter.
The next morning I got up very early, as usual, and left for work having no idea what had happened the night before. I looked at the trap, saw that the cat food had been eaten and the door was held open with sticks, and said to myself, “These are the smartest fucking raccoons ever. We’re never going to catch them.”