We caught the critter!

So, many of you know that we stayed up a lot of the night on Friday night since there was a critter in our attic that we could hear scratching and stomping around. We could tell it was bigger than a mouse, but it took us a while to figure out if it was on the roof or in the attic. We finally determined that it was in the attic after the critter stepped on one of the can lights Matt happened to be standing under. Luckily, the boys didn't have a clue and slept through all this just fine (although Brett was certain it was a red frog up there hopping around when we filled them in the next morning).

On Saturday morning, Matt climbed up on the roof, looking for a hole where something might have gotten in, but found nothing. So, we called a critter catcher to help us. He came over and immediately found the vent that had been used for an entrance and determined that it was probably an opossum and not a raccoon, which was a relief. He instructed us to try to trap it out that night by making short wire cages to wire around the vents and to wait until about 10 PM to give the possum time to go out to hunt. We also have a live trap here, thanks to Grandpa, which we set as well with apples for bait in hopes that we wouldn't catch a cat instead.

So, at 10 PM, Matt climbs up on the roof, armed with the little cage kits we made up before the sun went down, some wire snippers and a flashlight. He got the cages installed and we waited to see if we would hear the critter. We were happy to discover that we successfully trapped him out!

But we didn't catch anything in the trap...until last night! Matt noticed that the trap was shut when he went out to leave this morning and discovered that we had a small possum in our trap. He was very calm until Matt picked up the cage to haul him off to let him go, then he started hissing. Here's a picture of the cause of our fun-filled weekend: