Any Critters in your Attic?

[coffeegod]

Alright so this house is starting to make me sick! So I just finished destroying the old concrete block chimney in my kids room reno project, he'll get an extra 4 square feet of running room now.Now I was pulling out all the insulation in my current room reno from the ceiling... whats left of it to find lots of garbage falling down on me like cat food boxes.... couple empty torn cat food bags... and a bunch of other miscellaneous junk.... the low and behold something hits me pretty good on the shoulder and hits the floor. It's a freakin' dead cat! Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! :ahhhhh:

Man... that's nasty! I looks like its been there for YEARS all bones and fur stiff as a stick... one of his legs snapped off when he hit the floor. Apparently is seems like someone sealed him up there to take care of an old mouse problem I think... hence the cat food boxes and bags. That's just sick! Can't imagine that thing rotting up in the ceiling like that.

I've buried "Frankie" in the back yard... he at least deserved a proper burial after his crappy life!

Some people should be shot! Kind of scared to continue with the rest of the house after this... grandma might fall out the attic next! :afraid:

[joed]

At least it wasn't human.

http://www.thestar.com/article/239573

[Mr T]

If that happened to me, I'd be finding out the age of everything up there, and looking up the previous owner of that time and probably gp do something that'd get me arrested.

I bought this place 9 years ago. It was vacent for 2-3 years with roof problems. It never leaked into the house itself but there were some serious roof leaks. One of the corner overhangs had a security light in it.. That overhang rotted so bad that the light, box and all just fell through the soffit creating a nice sized hole. From what I can tell the house was vacent when this happened, but the light was disconnected at the switch box so there has been a water issue there for a while.

Anyways, racoons found this hole. When I bought the house, i also bought a large family of (large) racoons living in teh attic. The last thing I wanted to do was to seal off the hole and trap them in the attic. So i created a barrier where they could climb out of the hole but not climb back in. They got around my first 3 creations, then I got mad. I started putting things up to deter them from going in.. Since I took care of the source of hte mouse problem I also had (3" hole punched through foundation for 1.5" AC lines, not sealed up at all) I had a bunch of mouse traps sitting around. I attached them to the barrier. That stopped them for a few days till they learned how to trip them without getting hit. Next I got some carpet tack strip and put it up around the edges of my barrier.. They refused to cross that.. After a few days of no activity in the attic I finally sealed up the hole. To this day I still get a occasional coon on my roof checking out where the hole was. Damn coons.

The coons moved around alot of the insulation in the attic making nests. Plus they left behind a huge mess of coon crap and food scraps. I had to have all the insulation removed from the attic. I took the occasion to replace and update wiring in teh attic and install phone/network/coax lines to all the rooms, then had insulation blown back in (removed about 3-4" installed 13")

The insulation people said this is the worst mess theve ever seen.

[scuba_dave]

My last house was built in 1905
No foundation, dirt crawlspace
The mice would just crawl up inside the walls
1st year I was there I caught 14 mice in the small attic
I found one dead in a wall cavity

One Apt I had the cat used to crawl up into the area above the drop ceiling
We didn't even know he was going up there until one night
Watching TV, it was quiet...and we hear him walking across the ceiling

Hope it was an accident that he got trapped up there :(

[coffeegod]

Damn Joed... that's terrible! I don't even know what I'd do if I found something like that... I know "the woman" would want to sell real fast!

Good coon story T, I hear a lot of stories about those cute little buggers doing a lot of damage. I like your tack strip idea.

Hey Dave did you ever get your cat back out? You sure you didn't own my house at one time? :hmmmm2:

[scuba_dave]

Yes, we lifted up a ceiling tile & he came down
Found the opening in a closet & sealed it up

[Mr T]

ahh i got tons of these stories...
This was aboout 20 or so years ago. We were remodeling my parents house. We added a 2nd floor on the back of the house. It was all framed in but the 2nd floor was open to the attic still of the main area which is just 1 floor (to run electric plumbing and such). I was in the main part of the house and heard a noise up in the attic... Our cats liked to go up there since it was easy access. I went over to the attic opening and called for the cat.. He was a good sized black and white cat. I could see him walking towards me slowly. He got closer and closer then i realized.. it wasnt our cat.. it was our black and white 100+ pound german shepard up there! Luckily the house has the 1950's sheetrock/plaster thats indestructable otherwise he would have fallen through. Scared the hell out of me!

[vegetableassassin]

My house in Ontario was built in the 1920's, and had no insulation etc. So I was renovating the living room, and tearing the lath and plaster down. I had started on the final section when I saw something odd behind. Thoughts of hidden treasure briefly entered my mind when I realized I had just found a bees nest. Thank goodness it was empty! It filled the entire width between the studs, and was about 5 feet tall.
I found a couple of smaller ones in the next stud space over. What was funny to me was that under the aluminum siding outside, there was wood siding, and someone had stuck an old fuse into a knot hole in the wood siding right where the big nest was. I wonder if they just didn't want to deal with removing the bees! lol.

[woodchuck2]

The worst attic i have been in was about ten years ago, right full of bats. The had a pile of crap about 3' high and 8' long, stunk to high heaven. Another attic i was in some time ago was full of pigeons, that pile of crap was just as big and there were nests everywhere. The filthy sky rats were flying right through the glass windows. I put up plexy glass and that killed a few but they got through that too. In the end i had to mount 3/4 steel mesh on the outside of the plexy glass to keep them out.

[thumbnail]

At least it wasn't human.



loll. this guy's right. you should be at least happy it wasn't human.