Background!
Recently the Verminary family moved to RI. Our neighborhood is just south of Providence, quite near to the bay, and pretty darn suburban, but there is a surprising amount of small wildlife in and around the area. We have a covered, unenclosed front porch which stretches across the front width of the house. There’s an outdoor carpet spread from end to end across the entire porch, with a rubber mat leading up to the front door.
A few months ago we noticed that some animal had torn up the carpet right down through the wood in one spot near the front door. We moved the mat to cover the spot and didn’t think much of it. Yesterday, it happened again, only this time there is a significantly larger hole in the carpet, the rubber mat itself was dragged aside and whatever animal was involved left some pretty distinct bite marks on the edge.
Photos are here (Picasa Web Album link). I forgot to put something in there for scale, but the gnawed area on the mat is 4" wide.
Some additional facts:
[ul]
[li]This is happening at night, sometime between 11 pm and dawn, at which time the downstairs windows are closed. I am home with the kids all day and the first floor of this house more or less amounts to one big boxy room with a whole lotta windows, so there’s no way the porch could be ripped up during daylight hours without anybody noticing.[/li][li]We have two indoor cats who have never been outside or on the porch. They are indolent and fat, but do freak out when they spot wildlife.[/li][li]There is no discernible odor in the ripped-up area, whether of urine, decomposing animal, food, or anything else. There’s no hair, feces, broken claws, or conveniently lost teeth either.[/li][li]From what I can see, there’s no access point to get under the porch; it is (probably) cinderblock all around for 2 feet off the ground, and the front steps are brick.[/li][li]I have not noticed any signs of rats or mice, although we have squirrels and chipmunks in the yard. Maybe some kind of burrowing animal has dug under the porch somehow, but I also haven’t seen any signs of disturbance in the dirt around the base of the porch.[/li][li]A few months ago we were woken up around 2 am by a godawful racket in the tree out front. After about 15 minutes of screeching, two fairly big, low-slung animals ran headfirst down the trunk in pursuit of a really freaked-out squirrel. We were unable to identify what they were, but this recording (YouTube link, noises start at 2:00 in) sounds identical to the noises we heard.[/li][/ul]
Any guesses, Dopers? Raccoon? Skunk? Fisher cat? I’d be surprised if it was a neighborhood cat, but it’s possible. Mr. Verm informs me that we have a cage trap down in The Basement of Unexplored Wonders; should we attempt to employ it?