Be a post whore!

[glatt]

Originally Posted by glatt

Got a call from my wife a few minutes ago. She had been able to secure some ammonia from the grocery store, and has doused two rags thoroughly with the foul stuff and shoved them into the base of our chimney where the furnace hooks into it. Hopefully that will drive our resident raccoon away. She's also called a chimney sweep to install a chimney cap later in the week. If the raccoon isn't gone by then, the chimney $weep can remove it for a $mall fee.


Moral of the story? You may be able to get away without a chimney cap for many many years, but eventually the lack of a cap will be a bigger problem than if you had just put one on in the first place.

I know you were all wondering how this turned out, and were worried for me.

Well, as it turns out, there was a break long enough in the showers that the roof dried off this afternoon, and the chimney sweep was willing to climb up there at the appointed time. The raccoon was no longer in the chimney. It had been driven away by the liberal application of ammonia soaked rags by us. The chimney sweep inspected the chimney and found no bedding materials brought in by the raccoon. He capped the chimney, wrote up an estimate to have some minor mortar repair done, and charged us a measly $113 dollars for the whole deal. I feel like we won the lottery. I was thinking we would have to pay a lot more, since everything is always outrageous around here.

glatt is one happy dude.