We have a dog. She is a black lab mix that we got from the animal shelter a few years ago. She is a very good dog and she likes to stay inside at night, but sometimes she smells bad because she plays outside all day. The trouble with her odor is that we are trying to sell our house and we cannot afford to have the house smell like a dirty dog. Since I do not feel like giving her multiple baths a week, we are making her stay in the garage at night until we sell our house. Currently it is just after summer and it is still hot outside. So I have a fan going in the garage and I leave one of the garage doors cracked open so the dog can have some fresh air.

We live in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains and raccoons are common. One night I apparently had the garage door cracked open enough for a raccoon to get in. I suppose the raccoon smelled the dog food in the garage and decided to go inside and get a free meal. That was a bad call on the raccoon's part... My dog won whatever fight there was. The dog killed the raccoon in a seemingly very quiet manner. No one in the house heard anything during the night. My wife and I sleep directly above the garage where the fight took place and we did not hear a sound. It surprises me that we did not hear any ruckus going on in the garage. It almost makes me believe that the raccoon did not put up a fight. Maybe my dog snuck up behind the raccoon and attacked it - or something. I don't know...

Anyway, my seven year old son found the raccoon the next morning before school. I had already gone to work and my wife was freaking out about the dead raccoon in the garage. She does not react well to dead things - raccoons, birds, roadkill, bugs,... whatever. My wife ended up calling my sister-in-law to dispose of the dead raccoon.

So, I want to publicly thank my sister-in-law for removing the dead raccoon from our garage. My seven year old son wanted to play with it. My wife was freaking out. I was at work. You saved the day. Thank you.