Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Wet feet & the pitter-patter of raccoon's feet

Yeah, so Saturday morning at 4:30am -- THIS happened....

This is after the water had receded quite a bit.

In case you can't tell and think that we just have shiny carpet, I awoke to 6 inches of water in my basement.  So there I was -- alone with my 17 month-old, two dogs, three cats, and 6 inches of water.  To say that "last weekend was stressful" was quite the understatement.

The Scientist left for one of his annual conference on Friday afternoon.  I had a fabulous week of girl time planned, which included lots of chick-flick watching and eating.  The powers that be had other plans...
Now before I continue with my story, the one thing that I must tell you is that I get Paranoid with a capital P at nightfall whenever The Scientist is gone.  So Friday night, it begins to rain & storm around 11pm-ish. This just feeds into my paranoia.  My thoughts quickly run to how much easier it is for someone to break into my house and trap my daughter and myself upstairs to kill us with there is lots of thunder and the dogs can't hear a break-in.  By checking the radar from my iPad in the darkness of my bedroom constantly, I learn that the storm is moving due-east and my house is sitting along the storm front line.  So we are continually battered by heavy rains and heavy winds for hours.

Around 4:30, both dogs were laying in my bedroom, which makes me even more paranoid since they can't hear what's going on downstairs.  I think that I hear a car turning on gravel, which makes me think that someone has drove into my driveway.  I get out of bed to look out the window to check and notice that my front yard is engulfed in water.  The entire front yard is water.  In the four years of living here, I had never seen anything like it.  So I think to myself "Self, The Scientist isn't going to believe you unless you get photographic evidence."

I head downstairs to take my photographs from the front door and I notice Norman (one of my cats) sitting at the top of the basement stairs, just staring down.  My instant reaction was "Holy Shit!  Someone's in the basement!!!!"  I reach my arm around the corner to flip on the lights, petrified of seeing someone standing at the foot of the stairs.  As I peek around the corner, all I see is water...

To make a really long story shorter, I had 6 inches of water in my basement.  I called insurance, they are covering it to our limit (which isn't that high).  The culprit ended up being a drain that was outside the basement door that couldn't keep up with the heavy rain for so long.  Thankfully, the three drains in our basement were working and the water was completely drained out by 7:00am.  We ended up being in a catastrophe area, according to my insurance company and couldn't get an emergency claim to come out and help me clean it.  The most that I could do was put a fan downstairs and then I put a fan on the steps pointing downward to keep the musty air down.  So my basement still sits wet -- just waiting for The Scientist and my father to come and rip out the carpet.  The house is beginning to get that damp basement smell.

Last night, this happened (though the photo was taken this morning as the number were still sitting on my phone)...


Before continuing, please know that I didn't end up making the call.  But I did walk downstairs with this dialed in, just in case someone was going to jump out at me.  So the night was normal, The Lady went to bed around 8pm.  I cleaned up after she fell asleep and then laid down next to her (in my bed) to watch a little television before falling asleep.  As I'm laying in bed, watching TV, Munk suddenly jumps up off his bed and starts barking downstairs.  I quickly flip on the downstairs landing light and he, Bishop (my other old, mostly deaf dog) and I all stand silently at the top of the stairs, just waiting for another noise.  Nothing comes.  So I go back to bed and continue watching my DVR'ed show.  Another minute later, Munk again jumps up from his bed and races to the top of the stairs, furiously barking down the stairs.  Now I start wigging out.  I dial 9-1-1 on my phone and have my thumb hovering over the "call" button as I slowly descend the stairs.  Although Munk is a ferocious watch dog, he is a complete scaredy-cat -- totally letting me go down to battle with the intruder myself.  My heart is pumping a thousand miles a minute as I sneak around downstairs, inspecting each of the entryways into my home (there are three separate doors).  All turn out to be locked and no signs of a burglar.

I go back upstairs, assuming that Munk must have heard the cats running around downstairs and that's what set him off.  I climb back into bed and then I heard the thumping that Munk must have heard earlier.  I silenced the TV at least three times to better hear the thumping.  Someone was on the roof!!!!  But the more that I listened to the thumping, I realized that the pattering were too close together for it to be a human.  I ruled out coyote as they can't climb and mountain lion as there aren't any in our area.  The only thing that I think could have been making those noises were fat-ass raccoons!  We had a raccoon living in an easement a couple of years back -- but we closed it off with liquid nail and those suckers wouldn't be able to get back in.  My only thought was they were returning for their stay at Casa de Scientist and realized that we had closed up shop!

I seriously can not wait for The Scientist to come home -- only so I can get a good night's sleep.

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