There's a what in my house!!!!

Holy crappers! I thought I was going to sh@?1 my pants Monday night. I got home from work, and went down to the laundry room on my daily routine to start a load of laundry. The bigger dogs were just going nuts by the hot water tank. I moved everything away and didn't see anything. The hot water tank looked like it was on, and I didn't smell gas. Since I didn't see a problem, I just figured the dogs were a little nutty. They did the same thing a few more times during the evening, and again I couldn't see any problems other than a half broken window pane on the door. I thought the pane was damaged from the thunderstorms on Sunday, so no big deal. The window would get fixed when Lawn guy got home. Around about the time it was bedtime, we went back downstairs, and again the dogs went directly to the water tank. By now I'm a little frustrated with the game. I shooed the dogs out of the room just in time to hear some scurrying going on by the hot water tank. Now what I thought as I started looking again only this time I looked up. Low and behold is the back end of something fuzzy. Great a stray cat got in the house. I hollered up the stairs to LG that it was a cat. Dear daughter and I, armed ourselves with mop and broom handles, headed over to remove the pesky darling from the rafters of the basement. I poked and it swatted. I was looking at its tail and thinking, "gosh that tail looks mighty thick for a cat. Maybe its really a squirrel." So, I decided to try to poke it again. This time I could feel that the thing was biting on the stick. Next poke I try to lift its tail to see what varmint I was really dealing with, when a flipping RACCOON turns around and looks at me like WTF? OMG!@!@!!! I start yelling its a raccoon and scare the stuffins out of DD and LG.

Now its 10:00 at night, and we start making phone calls. To no avail mind you! Finally, animal control has answers, but not one I want to hear. Did ya know that they only come out if its a bat? Yeah lovely! We call an exterminator and we looking at 600 bucks to get this thing out of the house. Bless my country father-in-law. He came back with LG and started poking the already ticked off raccoon until it finally went out of the basement. What a fiasco! Here's a couple of pictures of the butt of our friend. Unfortunately, I wasn't taking any pictures during the removal. Somehow, I didn't think that was a smart plan!