Just pulled a 2-foot raccoon nest out of a flue in Pittsburgh

Tbh I've never seen anything like it. Got a call from a lady in Squirrel Hill who said her fireplace was smoking back into the room. I ran my rods up and hit a solid block about 6 feet up. Took me 45 minutes of careful poking and scraping to break it loose. Turns out a raccoon had been stuffing leaves and twigs down there for weeks. Ngl I learned to always bring a shop vac on those calls because the mess was unreal. Anybody else dealt with critter blockages this bad?

2 comments

2 Comments

rivershah1mo ago

You ever just stare at a pile of debris and wonder how a critter fit all that in such a tight space? I had a similar thing with a chimney full of pinecones once, must have been a wood rat that spent a whole season stockpiling them in there. Shop vac is honestly the best tool for the job, saves you from having to sweep up the same mess twice.

dakota7871mo ago

Honestly, you saying you "pulled" a raccoon nest out of a flue makes it sound like you just yanked it out in one piece, but like you said later, it took careful scraping and ended up as a huge mess. Ngl, I used to think you could just pull those things out too until I had to deal with a squirrel nest that basically crumbled into a thousand separate twigs the second I touched it. That shop vac idea you mentioned is actually a lifesaver, I just wish I had thought of it before I spent two hours sweeping up a chimney full of leaves by hand.