I live in a small seaside community in the deep south.
- You might have seen us on the news recently, because the entire area was smashed by a Category 5 hurricane.
The storm surge made the sea level rise 15 feet, and a lot of people saw the houses literally washed away! I was lucky in that regard, because my home was not damaged very badly. I lost power and wifi for a couple of days, but I still consider myself fortunate. A strange thing happened while the power was out. This was the first time in three months that the HVAC system had been shut off. Even when I wasn’t using the air conditioning I liked to leave the internal fans running, for constant air circulation throughout the condo. Now that the A/C was silent, I started to hear odd and frightening sounds coming from above. It sounded like something was crawling through my ductwork, or perhaps in the attic. I had never noticed the sounds before because the hum of the air conditioning and the fans covered it. There was no way to call anyone for help, so I decided to check it out myself and took off the grate from one of the air vents. Inside the air duct I could see clear signs of animal infestation, although I couldn’t tell what kind of animal. It was nerve-wracking and it took almost a week before I could get an HVAC tech and an animal control officer out to help me with my problem. Finally we got the raccoons out!