This is not what the apples were for

I was trying to decide what to blog about on Sunday — I have a couple of recipes to post and I had a fun weekend (though I have no photo documentation). But then what was supposed to be a quiet Sunday night turned interesting.

It had been a busy day, and I was relaxing on the couch, trying to find some motivation to clean my kitchen. Then I started hearing some noises above me. I thought it was my upstairs neighbor, but I started noticing it was actually in the part of the ceiling that drops down for the air vent. And then I distinctly heard claws moving around. After several minutes, I decided I had to alert my landlord's dad, I'll just call him G, who lives upstairs and takes care of the building.

G opened a square opening in the ceiling that accesses the air vent. Of course whatever I heard had stopped moving. But he left the access point open, thinking it would be a small mouse or maybe a squirrel. And he went next door to his daughter's (my landlord) for dinner.

I tried to relax and watch TV but was completely aware of every sound. The next thing I know I look up and see a raccoon sticking its head out. I screamed, ran out the back door and next door to my landlord's house.

G came back over with his son-in-law and brooms. We got a few more glimpses of it (and proved that I wasn't crazy) and came up with a plan to set traps where the vent leads to in the utility area.

I had a bowl of apples sitting on my dining room table, and G asked me to cut a couple up and put peanut butter and chocolate on them to use in the traps.

By that point we had closed the opening, and I knew I wasn't going to have a raccoon in my apartment so I relaxed some. And I just had to laugh thinking that of all the ways I've thought of using my share, using it to trap a raccoon is not one of them.

I am still waiting for the raccoon to fall for the trap or for an exterminator to get it out of the vent, but I feel much better about the situation as of this posting.

I am reminded that one of the reasons I chose this apartment, which I rented based on some photos, was because G lived upstairs and would be around to fix any problems. I didn't anticipate a raccoon, but I am glad I had someone to run to. I'm pretty sure my last apartment manager would have called me on Monday morning and told me it was not an emergency.