‘What kind of chicken?” I asked. “Cooked,” Lou Ocasio said, with a laugh. “Jewel deli Wing Dings.” Raccoon junk food. “In the summer we use marshmallows or something sweet because the chicken gets pretty grubby in hot weather; they like strawberries too.”
My Victorian on Ridgeland Avenue had been invaded by a raccoon, who seemed to be living comfortably (and permanently) in my chimney. Neighbors suggested I call Critter Detectives, but thus far the trap was empty.
That’s when Ocasio brought out the big guns”Wing Dings.
Ocasio has a college business degree but took over the family business when his parents needed help and continued on when they retired. The senior Ocasios now live in a small town in Missouri part of the year and in Florida the other part. “I want my son to do something else”like be a doctor,” Lou says, when asked about a third generation running Critter Detectives. “But if he wants to, he can have the business.”
Ocasio pointed out that pest control is a good business in any economy, and he is busy year round. He travels all over the Chicago area from Winnetka and Bannockburn to Oak Park and beyond. “Every area has its pests,” he said, “but we are extra busy in spring.” Lou carries a beeper with him and answers the company phone himself.
Critter Detectives are located in Lombard, and they handle beavers, muskrats, pigeons, coyotes, bobcats and all other wildlife removal. Lou prides himself on his humane methods and compliance with the State of Illinois.
“It may take some patience, but we will get him,” he assured me.
That night, after a long baseball game, we ambled in. Now a nighttime ritual, I slogged to the fence and looked up.
In the cage was a lump. “I think we got it,” I said incredulously. My older son ran excitedly into the house and brought out the flashlight. There, in the warm yellow glow we saw the fat raccoon’s hairy heinie backed up into the end of the wire cage.
To say that “rejoicing was heard throughout the land” would be an understatement. We whooped and cheered. In sharp contrast, the raccoon was quiet and motionless.
I raced over to my nighbor’s house. “Can I just double-check and see if it really is a raccoon?” I asked. We both peered out her side window. It definitely was in there. “Ask where they release it,” she said. “You don’t want him coming back.”
I ran back and placed my call to Lou. “We got him!” I crowed. “I’ll collect him in the morning,” said Lou.
“Where do you release him? Do you spin him in circles or something so he gets confused? I don’t want him waddling back here like some old dog following its family across country in one of those Reader’s Digest stories.”
“State law says we have to terminate them,” Lou said.
A few hours later, washed, brushed and bedded down in our jammies, the bumps in the night began. The wire chewing. The cage thumping. All night long.
I started to feel rather badly about it around 2 a.m. I was listening to the raccoon’s last hours on earth. I hope that wing ding was good, I thought. Better than falling for a twinkie”although as one acquaintance put it, “A twinkie would be great bait. It would stay fresh for years.”
The next day, Lou cheerfully pulled up in his truck and pulled out his ladder and gear. Wearing gloves, he pulled down the wire cage and put up another one.
Wait a minute, no refills wanted, just take the full one away!
“She’s had babies,” he announced. “Judging from the lack of hair around her teats, she’s been nursing awhile and the babies are big enough to survive.”
My knees quaked. I felt weak.
“There are probably three or four,” he said. “Keep an eye out”it may take a few days.”
Animal tales
According to Ocasio, raccoons choose chimneys to nest in because they can hide their babies from hawks and male raccoons”who may kill the young out of competitive rage. They may live there for six months”two months during their gestation period and then four to raise the litter to maturity. “The mother will leave the nest at night and bring fresh kill”a squirrel or an oppossum”to the babies to eat,” he said. Great, pest carcasses in my chimney. Should smell great around July.
“Then the mother will carry the young raccoons down the roof, and they’ll be ready to return to the wild,” he added. “But the mother and the female babies will return every year to birth”that’s why you have to terminate them.”
According to Ocasio, state law gives three options to pest control: Release them within 100 yards of the home, which defeats the purpose; euthanize them; or take them to a rehabilitation center.
“No center will take them,” he said. “They have to pay to feed and house the animal, and there are thousands of pests trapped every month.” Lou caught an albino raccoon once that he felt had genetic merit. “I tried to give it to Brookfield Zoo but they didn’t want him.” The animal now lives on his parents’ farm in Missouri.
Ocasio euthanizes his pests in a CO2 chamber. The carcasses are then kept frozen until they can be cremated by the same services veterinarians use. Then the ashes are safely deposited. Somewhere.
Lou had a bat in his truck that he’d caught”by gloved hand”in an attic. “The strangest thing I’ve seen is a skunk in an attic,” he said. “Skunks are not climbers; it had entered in the basement and then climbed up to the attic when the family closed off its original point of entry.”
He’d set a trap, not knowing what kind of pest it was, then carried it carefully down when it was caught, hoping it wouldn’t spray inside the house.
“I’ve been bitten many times, but I am heavily vaccinated against just about everything,” he said. “Listen for a sound like baby birds,” he said in parting. “They’ll squawk at night.” And off he went.
I alerted “the troops””the little girls next door. They were simultaneously thrilled and repulsed at the thought of baby raccoons.
The next generation
Hours later, I heard a chorus from “the peanut gallery.” The three little girls next door, attired in their baseball uniforms, were hopping up and down as excited as if they had hit a home run. “I see the babies!” one little girl announced.
Sure enough, there were several little fuzzy heads poking up from the brick chimney.
Two nights later, in the evening, again, rolling home from another late baseball game, there were two young raccoons in the Buckeye tree. One was perched where his mother had often sat. Like his mom, he stared at us. But not for long.
Arms outstretched, the two were gingerly trying to make their way down the tree. Occasionally, they would yap at each other and lick each other in the mouth. We watched fascinated as they made their way down the tree and scrounged around for food. Later, I found a sibling dead on the neighbor’s lawn. My maternal instinct kicking in, I actually felt really awful.
And horribly responsible. I scooped it up with a snow shovel and hid it in the gutter so my sons wouldn’t find it. I didn’t want them calling their mother a murderer.
The next evening, a message from Lou on the phone announced that he had stopped by and found one of the babies in the cage. He had rebaited and left another cage on the roof. The days went by with no sign of the last little rascal, so Lou removed the empty cage.
End of the tails?
Our life has gone on, with the opening of the Oak Park pools and the closing of school replacing the raccoons as the big neighborhood news. But I still look up, out of habit more than hope, at the roof and chimney. And at the old Buckeye, with so many empty crooks perfect for roosting.
After all, one is still out there …