A friend of mine has been dealing with a job where a chimney company sealed a single flue chimney with a piece of slate after inspecting it. No other way to enter it at all. The damper was frozen shut, and the company claimed to have run a camera down it before sealing it. The lady was complaining of still hearing noise, so he busted the damper out and cleaned up a 5 gallon bucket of droppings. No sign of any coon at that time. That night he got a call, two coon were in the firebox behind the glass doors. He got one, the other went back up, so he made a cover and left a cage for the last one ( or so he thought). Midnight last night he went back over, and removed three more coon from the fireplace. The coon were all in poor shape, very low body weights. Not a real exciting story, just another day at work..... until I tell you the date they sealed that chimney.
How long do you think it is possible for coons to live in there like that ?
The chimney was built with an internal heat-I-lator type system, which is why the coon were not seen in the flue during the camera inspection, or when the damper was removed I suspect.

Albert,

I'd be thinking of water as the ultimate limiting factor for dehydration and ultimately death.

I wouldn't be surprised if they could make it a couple of weeks if the temperature was lower versus a
summer scenario. Also if they weren't out of fat reserves from winter denning etc...

Hard to believe they didn't make enough noise immediately for her to know that something was still in
there.

I've had calls for trapped rock squirrel juveniles that were making noise for days before the people finally
found someone willing to come out and look.

These were mid summer in NM, was surprised they made it.

A good story awful as the ordeal was for the raccoon to remind us all about the possibilities with locking something
in even if the evidence suggested all was well.

With maternity season here I'm always concerned with that aspect of any raccoon or skunk issue we get.

Justin

2 months.

Justin, do you lock many skunk families in chimneys?

Okay Albert, you guys had quite a winter so the raccoons probably slept a lot. I'll guess 2 months too. We locked a raccoon in a

fireplace chimney a couple years ago but he made enough racket the first night to get us out there and retrieve him. My question is:

why does anyone build a chimney that has hiding places big enough for raccoons. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of getting the smoke out?

Ha good catch Paul. To clarify sealing out crawlspace a or sheds etc... (Where skunks are concerned).

Devils in the details. Lol.

Thinking of winter denning I can see the longer time frame, I'm in the 80s and 90s already so my winter thoughts have gone...

80s and 90s! You guys must have global warming. It finally hit seventy today and we're all running around nude. Not a pretty sight.

24 days?

The date on her chimney cap receipt is 12-22-14, more than 4 months and a week with no water, food or daylight. We were amazed to say the least. The first one would have been in the 20-25 pound range when healthy, he was captured by hand, and was about 5-6 pounds and lethargic. The second was in the cage, the other two were in the home last night, and both were captured near water sources, one drinking out of a mop bucket.
Paul, I did not see this one, but he explained to me there was a system built around this out of brick, that allowed hot air to circulate and come out of vents, they are pretty common up here, a type of convection heat recycling deal. I never realized the void was that large , enough to hide 4 coon. The lady has only been complaining of noise for a week or so, and when my friend inspected the attic, the pull down staircase was littered with Flying Squirrel droppings. He attributed the noise to the flyers, especially since the chimney was capped so long ago. Finally the noise got so bad she insisted he break the damper to check inside. We were talking this morning, and I told him two things are for certain about this business, one is, never say never about anything. The other is that even after 3 decades of doing it, you still learn something new almost daily.

Your last sentence pretty much sums up this crazy occupation and why we love it. Getting to tell the world about it on sites like

this one is just icing on the cake. Thanks Albert!

So you guys are say at 5o years old I gotta start learning a bunch of new stuff, great I'm in. Sure am glad I'm on this site though hope it shortens my learning curve. Great info. First " raccoon" job for me turned out to be mice