Redwall Part II: The Phantom Menace...

The only reason I’m writing what’s basically an epilogue to my last blog post is because of my housemates. Not because they think it’s an important continuation of the story, but because they still think it’s funny. To this day. This is the night where they realised a) I was so stressed by this furry little demon that I had been going out of my mind, and b) now I was completely out of my mind.

One day after the DEFCON 1 sighting in the kitchen/living room (aka my new bedroom) I had basically given up getting my wonderful, habitually non-negotiable 8 hours sleep. ⅔ hours on a good day was all I could hope for, between creaking floorboards, noisy pipes, what I discovered was actually the fridge fan rousing itself to life every so often...

Not gonna lie, the first few times I woke up hearing it, i may have alternated between creeping towards the fridge area broom in hand. Or stomping into the kitchen and breaking into song at the top of my lungs…. Don't judge me.

My old housemate assured me when we had mice in the garage (which I discovered when one ran across my foot, and another old housemate confirmed when one fell on her as she moved her boxes - see a pattern here?), that they hate noise. I’ve always lived with singers, so she would always walk down to the garage to do her laundry, banging on the walls like SWAT and singing songs from church in full voice.

In any case - I was definitely at my wits end. At this point only I had been there to physically see the mouse, they all just had to take my - and pest control’s- word for it. Since PC found mouse droppings behind the baseboards in the kitchen I knew it was freely roaming about every nook and cranny of the house. Stupid hollow walls.

My housemates stayed up having dinner in the living room so I wouldn’t have to fall asleep alone. I was so exhausted this took no time at all. But I woke up at the slightest thing, such as scratching across the kitchen floor. Shooting up out of bed (well, sofa) I saw a little black mass moving across the floor in the dark and orange light of the streetlamp through the open kitchen window. Again, I wish I could tell you I handled it well. I really do. I wish I could tell you I wasn’t stood up in the corner of the sofa screaming bloody murder as if Jason was stalking towards me with a chainsaw. I wish I could say I didn’t shout at my housemates both up and downstairs to come and save me. One came rushing down with marigolds on and a plastic basin, one rushing up from minding her business on the toilet, bracing themselves on the other side of the door. Only to burst in, turn on the light, and find a big hunk of red onion skin being blown across the floor.

You know that look your parents give you when they’ve just had enough. The look you get when you’re so sure of something, and then it turns out it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Combined with that sad look that you really must be low-key crazy. I’m basically the kid in horror movies desperately trying to convince the adult that the monster that keeps popping up all over the gaff is real, before its too late. Only in this case it isn’t a monster, and too late never happens, but that tired sad look definitely comes all the way through.

That day I lost my patience, my mind and allll credibility in future mouse related discussions. And they still think it’s funny. So I will continue to sleep with my room door open now I’m back in it. If I got any furry little visitors, well then we’re all gonna have some.

A/N:  As brave as I like to talk, my fear and paranoia is still all too real, even at the mention of another rodent invasion. 

Case and point, another gem from one of my housemates this week: 

After we checked my room *AGAIN*  (there was an unpleasant smell coming from our floor and we were hoping a dead mouse would turn out to be  the cause #closure). One of the girls is deathly afraid of mice, as am I at this point, and was searching pictures of mice while sitting on by bed to distract herself - I made them come to my room, as always, for moral support - let’s face it I don’t do well when I’m on my own. When I described it, and how the thing had gone all over my room destroyed the carped and stuffing carpet fluff inside the mouse traps we used, she casually said only rats are usually that smart. “That sounds like a rat”.

A RAT. A RAT MY G - I don't even know what other formats I can use - she said 

A. WHOLE. RAT. 

My other housemate calmly agreed, and added oh so matter-of-factly that she also thought it had been a rat but didn’t say so at the time. She deliberately didn’t say so at the time, even though the behaviour was obviously not that of a mouse, but she knew I wouldn’t have been able handle it. I think we can all agree she was right. Even when she said that my chest got weak. And based on the pictures we pulled up on google, it was probably a rat. So. It turns out, the ghost of the mouse that terrorised my room was way more comforting than knowing a rat basically pillaged everywhere my skin has touched and  everything I own.

That’s it, take me now Lord.