I live, and so does my squeaky friend
I wasn't actually intending to post tonight, but I received a sign from above. Specifically about six inches over my head and climbing. In the shower.
One of the many eccentricities about this place is that when the temperature drops below a certain point, animals start to move into the walls from the outside. Some are big, creating ominous scratchings and loud thumps. Some are very small. I generally don't begrudge them because I never see them (though Jay and I did once see a truly ROUS caliber opossum sauntering by the river one night) and, damn, it's cold, more power to them if they can find an unobtrusive way to get in out of it.
Also peculiar is the shower curtain's tendency to sort of crawl and writhe in odd ways because of the humidity and mist patterns in the bathroom. So I'm used to being creeped out by movement of the very diaphanous curtain every once in awhile, particularly considering I am but a few precious mechanical clicks away from legally blind (turns out so is my new sister-in-law; we compared prescriptions and she said "So, have they given you the retinal detachment lecture yet?"). But this time it was very consistent, upward moving movement. In the split second I had to make a decision it did passingly occur to me that it was probably a mouse, but after nearly 24 hours of travel (my flight from Austin Sunday was canceled due to the huge storm, and so I was up just before 4am this morning after turning in around 1am [yay conferences] to catch an absurdly early flight out -- which Northwest, it turned out, had completely screwed the pooch on, cross-booking me with Continental but neglecting to actually inform Continental of this, resulting in my wandering around the Austin airport until 12pm and then flying through North Carolina, La Guardia, and finally back to Syracuse and driving back here for a final just slightly post-midnight arrival) -- and said 24 hours of travel following two days of additional near-all-nighters, following following a week of mild sleep dep due to prep for all said -- was I ever ready to believe it was not a mouse, but perhaps a heretofore undiscovered species of hyperintelligent mutant snow scorpion with a shady past and a burning vendetta against God and all mankind. So I did what any rational person would do and I gave it a precise little punch which, in retrospect, was certainly vastly more traumatic for it than it was for me.
It was in fact a medium sized black field mouse that hit the rug with a soft thump and proceeded to run around madly looking for a way out. What was it doing climbing the curtain? How did it manage to get there in the first place? I have no idea. I stood there in the sulfurous shower water, adrenalined up and mildly hallucinatory from sleep dep, brain burn, and travel ennui, and finally decided to just proceed with my shower and let the mouse figure things out. After the week I've had there was little chance that my leaping wet and naked and half-blind after a tiny fast canny desperate furry creature was going to bring the evening to a peaceful close.
By the time I got out it had indeed vacated, somehow, possibly using one of its Mouse Ninja Vanish get-out-of-bathroom-free cards. In a way it's comforting to have a face to place with the tiny wall scratching noises (and they do indeed just come in from the cold; the cupboards and bird areas remain untouched), but I will probably have to figure out some firmer solution in the morning.
One of the many eccentricities about this place is that when the temperature drops below a certain point, animals start to move into the walls from the outside. Some are big, creating ominous scratchings and loud thumps. Some are very small. I generally don't begrudge them because I never see them (though Jay and I did once see a truly ROUS caliber opossum sauntering by the river one night) and, damn, it's cold, more power to them if they can find an unobtrusive way to get in out of it.
Also peculiar is the shower curtain's tendency to sort of crawl and writhe in odd ways because of the humidity and mist patterns in the bathroom. So I'm used to being creeped out by movement of the very diaphanous curtain every once in awhile, particularly considering I am but a few precious mechanical clicks away from legally blind (turns out so is my new sister-in-law; we compared prescriptions and she said "So, have they given you the retinal detachment lecture yet?"). But this time it was very consistent, upward moving movement. In the split second I had to make a decision it did passingly occur to me that it was probably a mouse, but after nearly 24 hours of travel (my flight from Austin Sunday was canceled due to the huge storm, and so I was up just before 4am this morning after turning in around 1am [yay conferences] to catch an absurdly early flight out -- which Northwest, it turned out, had completely screwed the pooch on, cross-booking me with Continental but neglecting to actually inform Continental of this, resulting in my wandering around the Austin airport until 12pm and then flying through North Carolina, La Guardia, and finally back to Syracuse and driving back here for a final just slightly post-midnight arrival) -- and said 24 hours of travel following two days of additional near-all-nighters, following following a week of mild sleep dep due to prep for all said -- was I ever ready to believe it was not a mouse, but perhaps a heretofore undiscovered species of hyperintelligent mutant snow scorpion with a shady past and a burning vendetta against God and all mankind. So I did what any rational person would do and I gave it a precise little punch which, in retrospect, was certainly vastly more traumatic for it than it was for me.
It was in fact a medium sized black field mouse that hit the rug with a soft thump and proceeded to run around madly looking for a way out. What was it doing climbing the curtain? How did it manage to get there in the first place? I have no idea. I stood there in the sulfurous shower water, adrenalined up and mildly hallucinatory from sleep dep, brain burn, and travel ennui, and finally decided to just proceed with my shower and let the mouse figure things out. After the week I've had there was little chance that my leaping wet and naked and half-blind after a tiny fast canny desperate furry creature was going to bring the evening to a peaceful close.
By the time I got out it had indeed vacated, somehow, possibly using one of its Mouse Ninja Vanish get-out-of-bathroom-free cards. In a way it's comforting to have a face to place with the tiny wall scratching noises (and they do indeed just come in from the cold; the cupboards and bird areas remain untouched), but I will probably have to figure out some firmer solution in the morning.