[BruceZ]

So I'm sitting here, and all kinds of scratching sounds start coming from my ceiling. No one else is here, so I suspect that my neighbor is doing some work in his attic crawl space which is adjacent to my own, but damn if doesn't sound like it's coming from my attic, and no one has access to that but me. So puzzled, I get up on the ladder with a flashlight, remove the board, and stick my head into the opening.

Now I can just make out in the shadows that there is definitely someone over there, and I hear what sounds like snoring! I think, "My god, some bum got in and is sleeping in my attic!" Then the sound becomes more ominous, almost like a warning growl, and as my eyes start to focus on a shape, in the flashlight beam I see 2 eyes staring back at me from about 10 feet away, and I see the outline of what I took to be a raccoon. It could have been a opossum. I didn't see a mask, and I didn't stick around to make a zoological identification. I pulled my head out of there and closed the hatch as fast as I could, falling a short distance down off the ladder.

I started to call animal control, figuring they would know how to deal with such things, but then just dialed 911 and figured they would contact the right people.

Well, a cop shows up about 10 minutes later, but by that time all sounds from the attic had stopped. He tells me right away that he wouldn't know what he could do anyway as he knows nothing about catching raccoons. He carefully repeated my inspection of the attic, but he could see nothing. It is possible that it is still there, hiding in the shadows, perhaps playing opossum. The cop tells me that animal control has tranquilizer guns and box traps, but they only come out during the day, and to call them in the morning.

I just hope that it (they?) can't get inside my living area. There shouldn't be any way it can do that, but I didn't think that there was any way into my attic either. I do have an attic fan which is mounted in a large hole in the roof, but there is an animal guard around it. I suspect that the wire screen got damaged by animals or birds as it was damaged once before by causes unknown. I don't even want to go up to look at it because if an animal is still there, I would have it cornered, and then I would be in serious trouble.

So I will wait until morning, but it will have every chance to come back, assuming that it ever left at all. I left the attic light on hoping that would help keep it away. Any ideas or advice would be appreciated.