An invariable aspect of living with wild beings that readily habituate to human ways is that one may acquire rambunctious house guests in the attic, chimney, or the house itself. Mammals especially like warm, soft, attic insulation during winter. Raccoons and fox squirrels are the most frequent and destructive tenants, and the coons do a lot of thumping about at night. Opossums and ringtails are native guests, too, and there are exotic black and brown rats. Honeybees, red paper wasps, and wintering northern flickers that drill through wood siding complete the usual group of natural cavity users that suburbanize by substituting attics for tree holes. Neighbors have a particularly tough time with raccoons that chew holes in ceilings and roofs and tear up insulation and wiring. One person left his attic folding ladder out for a coon to use to exit through the garage but forgot to leave the garage door open and had a new coon-sized hole in it the next morning. Unknowing folks feed raccoons, squirrels, and ringtails because they're cute, prepping them for winter invasions. My Labrador retrievers have seen to it that wild mammals stay out of our house, but now and then a raccoon, knowing when the dog sleeps, climbs a front porch column and peers in windows at us, who put a little culture in its life.