the roof over our heads

last night as we were falling asleep, i heard a noise. again...and again. a little thud. steve and i got up and slowly walked through the house until the noise led us to the fireplace. i figured haven must have been up and was kicking the wall-her room is right below the fireplace. i hurried down to find her fast asleep, the crib pulled away from the wall. it couldn't be her. so steve ran outside while i watched from inside. i heard him, "hello?" and then he ran across the yard. what the heck? there was a creature on our roof. bigger than a cat. steve started throwing rocks and it moved slowly, heavily. then i saw it's profile in the moonlight, a pointy little face and a huge bushy tail. it was definitely not a cat. probably a racoon. that bugger wasn't about to leave our roof and after calling police dispatch in search of animal control (who will pretty much only come out if you've got a cougar on the premises) we decided it would probably go away on it's own sometime in the night. it did. but it left us with this:

that little monster tore through two layers of shingles, through the shake, and down to the boards. in two places. it's supposed to rain today. so, steve left school, sent this picture to his professor as proof of the emergency, and now he's on the roof banging away. 


here, here to home-ownership! 


edited to add: i've been researching raccoons and how to repel them and it looks like this was most likely the work of a pregnant raccoon looking for a place to nest and birth her litter of 3-5 babes. once they find a home (attics are a favorite), they are nearly impossible to get rid of, so it looks like we're lucky that she didn't manage to get through those boards and that steve got the holes sealed up quickly. she'll be devastated upon her return, hopefully she moves along. oh, and she pooped on our roof-it looks like the work of a human. nash has been saying "it's not hooman poop" since he overheard our conversation.