Too Bad He Ain't No Coon Dog

For the last couple of nights, we get to lay in bed listening to some kind of critter in our walls eat or scratch or dig or something. Not comforting. It happened last summer, too, but it went away over the colder months and we forgot about it. But it is back with full vengeance. So after midnight sometime, we just couldn't take it anymore. Every half hour or so, Chris would get up and bang on the walls really hard, hoping to scare it away so it would stop, because besides being REALLY loud, we hear it's not good to co-habitat with an unknown animal in your walls. But it wouldn't stop. It kept getting louder and louder and I could just imagine a little claw or rodent mouth of some sort finding it's way through the insulation and eventually the drywall and seeing it eat its way through. We wouldn't have it! So we jump out of bed, run through the house, turn on all the lights, and Marlow runs after us. Chris grabs the biggest flashlight with working batteries that he can find, and I grab--what else but a broom. The famous weapon of women, right? (Even though I was a sharpshooter with my M16 and qualified as expert in grenades!) We book it outside in our pajamas, dog following. We circle the house, shining the light, looking for a massive hole of some sort that such an animal could get through. To help, I bang on the house or gutters every three feet or so to make sure they're not hiding within eyesight. We find nothing. Marlow is running around with his nose to the ground, sniffing away, because he knows something is up. Chris is pissed at whatever it is and ready to kill and destroy. (You have to understand that we've lost sleep over this thing.) We're basically yelling at it from the perimeter of our house, looking like fools with a broom and flashlight in our Sunday's best. I'm sure our neighbors were appreciative. We find nothing and go inside feeling defeated. Chris goes into the garage and up into the attic for one last chance of finding it. He climbs up with his flashlight (I've still never been up there and don't care to. It's a little crawl space hole and can't be pleasant.) and shines it in every corner of the attic. Finally he sees him! First little yellow eyes, then as the light comes to his shadow, he realizes it is a raccoon indeed. Luckily no man-sized rat or anything rodent-like, which makes me feel a little better. But we had no way of killing it, so today it is my job to find a pest control company who insures attics and is willing to crawl up there and hunt it down. Too bad we can't just send Marlow up there to get him.