I am STILL a City Girl

Remember this?

And this?

On Monday night, when Ed was gone overnight at work, I thought I woke up to some sort of noise coming from the other side of my  nightstand. It was a flapping, scrambling, weird sort of noise. I laid there and laid there and laid there, with my heart pounding out of my chest, but didn’t hear anything. I decided I must have dreamt it and amazingly went back to sleep. When Ed got home, I told him about it and he just rolled his eyes at me because he knows I don’t like sleeping home alone without him.

Then last night, we were both asleep and I HEARD THE NOISE AGAIN! I was completely freaked out! I woke up Ed, of course, because, as you know, when there are creatures around, the man of the house must be awakened.

He thought I was nuts and then suddenly, he heard it, too. We decided it sounded like it was coming from the vent or the duct work. We turned on the lights and looked around, saw nothing, so went back to bed. Of course, it’s hard to fall immediately back to sleep after such a traumatic event, and lo and behold, we heard the noise again, only this time, it was coming from Ed’s side of the bed!

I, being the city girl I am, wouldn’t get out of bed, but my brave husband did, after I threatened him and stole his covers. He got the second mouse trap we had saved from last winter, and put some cheese in it. Then he tried to put it down the vent, but he said, “This is crazy. I’ll never be able to get it out if I drop it down there!” So, being the city girl I am, I came up with the brilliant idea of using some duct tape and twine in order to be able to pull the trap back up. Ed, being the sensible guy he is, and wanting desperately to go back to sleep, obliged. He put the trap in the vent on his side of the bed and we tried to go to sleep. Then of course my brain is going a mile a minute and I thought, “what if that mouse (if that’s what it is) gets ON TOP of the trap, inside of going inside it, and uses the twine to climb out of the vent and gets into my bedroom? So, I had to make Ed get up again and close the vents so that the mouse wouldn’t be able to get out. So much for my brilliant idea of using twine…

(Sorry for the poor quality picture. I took it with my phone.)

Well, about two hours later, after we had just barely gotten back to sleep, I heard the sound again, coming from MY side of the bed. Being rather sleep-deprived at this time, I tried to wake Ed up by tapping on his chest. That was not a good idea. I think I might have given him a heart attack and FOR SURE we scared that creature half to death!

We ended up hearing that little creature for the next two hours until it was time to get up. Ugh. Neither of us have had any sleep. And no, the creature did not get inside that trap. Ed decided maybe the creature is in the wall and not in the duct work, so he put peanut butter in the trap (again, my idea, as that’s what caught the mouse last time, I think) and put it in the wall via the fire place, even though that’s not the wall in which we heard the mouse and I really think it’s in the duct work. If we don’t catch anything in the wall all day today, we’ll put it back in the duct work in our room tonight, with peanut butter and hopefully catch something. Either that or it’ll get back out however it got in there (which we totally can’t figure out) or it’ll die in there, which wouldn’t be pleasant either.

What’s really crazy, is that this is not the first time this has happened! When we first moved into this house, our first winter here, before I had my blog, we had a very similar experience, only the sound was coming from the vent underneath our bathroom sink. We never found out what it was, so we assume that the creature found its way out. But we still have no idea what it was or how it got in or what happened to it!!

We’re willing to listen to theories about how creatures get in our duct work, how to keep them out, and how to get rid of all such yucky creatures in general.

And now, the prompt for today’s thankfulness is: “I’m thankful for (a guilty pleasure).” And while today it won’t be a guilty pleasure because of how little sleep I got last night, rather, it is a necessity to be able to stay awake through Bible Study, I will have to say, “I’m thankful for Starbucks.”