It Wasn't A Parishioner

The scritch-scratch during the Sunday morning service at St. Peter's Episcopal Chapel on Old Stone Highway in Springs came from above - but not from on high.

"We saw a little hole by the chimney and eyes looking at us," Jane Maxey, who was at the service, said. It was a raccoon.

A member of the vestry of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in East Hampton, the parent church, Mrs. Maxey got to work.

Calling for Charlie Niggles, who used to trap small animals for their furs, she reached Carolyn Snyder, who explained that Mr. Niggles was unavailable but that his son, her grandchild Steven, who is 10, could take on the chore.

"He's learned around the farm when we've had animals getting into our chickens," Mr. Niggles said afterward, referring to Round Swamp Farm, the Lester family enterprise on Three Mile Harbor Road.

"I located where they were," Steven explained later, "and I put the trap real near it and set it. . . . I used peanut butter on bread and cupcakes." A little peanut butter smeared near the chimney and on the trap completed the lure. It worked. The captured critter was taken away and released.