Oh. I guess I should have posted here last night. But . . . raccoons!!!
Seriously. I was traumatized. I have PTSD from the little bastards. This has been going on for over a year now and last night I though I heard one on the roof so I go out with one of my 2000 lumen flashlights to see if I can spot it on the roof and I notice that one of the under eave vents has been ripped open. So now I want to go full jihad on their furry butts but in NJ, if a raccoon comes into your house and you don't offer it tea and biscuits, you end up doing 5 years hard time - I'm only exaggerating a little bit.
Anyway, I needed to start making plans to get rid of the shrubbery that letting them get to the roof to begin with so I text the guy that I had already talked to about doing the job - who, although he suspected I'm insane is now pretty much convinced of it, but he's very nice and he's done several other big jobs for me in the past.
I also have a siding guy coming over tomorrow for something else but I'll have him take a look at the vent. No point in doing the vent until the trees and shrubs are gone though.
But I also had to get myself psyched up to go up into the attic to cover the roof vent. I could have sworn that I had video surveillance of them coming in through there but when I inspected it today, it was fine. The footage doesn't actually show the opening so I guess I assumed they were coming in from there when now it seems they were probably coming in from the damaged eave vent all along. D'oh.
Well, hopefully, the problem will soon be resolved - after a few weeks and a few thousand dollars (including a bunch of other work that needs to be done). Then I can look forward to digging out from another winter of endless snow and freezing ass rain - YEAAAAA.
Good luck with the Critter problem eh!