Noises

Tuesday’s Miata noise wasn’t the only strange noise I encountered that day.

Sitting on the couch, waiting to see if my Spin ID was selected and a contestant on Wheel of Fortune would become my Secret Santa, we heard an odd noise from, what sounded like, the dishwasher. It was a very rhythmic sort of a cross between a rumbling, a knock and the sound of a high pressure spray drumming on something as it rotated. Donna jumped up, opened the dishwasher and removed a cookie tray in there that looked like a possibility. She started the dishwasher back up and came back into the living room. No sooner had she sat down, the noise started over.

This time we both got up. About halfway to the kitchen we realized that the noise was coming from the back hallway, that connects the bedrooms. Careful listening led us to the floor at the the entrance to the middle bedroom. The sound was now recognizable as scratching and it sounded quite loud and urgent. Pounding on the floor near there would make the sound stop, but not for long. It sounded like something trying to get in. It would be loud scratching for a couple minutes then stop for a couple minutes.

I have one of the high powered bicycle headlights and went outside to investigate. I checked all the crawl space vents to see if they were still in place, they were. Next I opened up the door to the crawl space, poked my head in and aimed the beam in the direction of the noise, I could see nothing. I didn’t dare go in any further, fearing I’d run into a rabid possum or a raccoon or maybe a wolverine. I returned in the house and reported my findings. She said, “I’ll call the pest control people and have them come out and look.” We thought for a while we would have to sleep in the bedroom on the other side of the house because the scratching was fairly loud, but by 11:00 PM it had totally stopped. The pest control people couldn’t make it until today, but that was alright because the sound never reappeared. But we still wanted to know if the claw monsters were still lurking under there, or if they had gone, how much damage had they done trying to escape.

The pest guy showed up, and like me, walked around the house looking at the vents, but unlike me, he actually went under the house to look around. His report was that he could find no indication of any wayward creatures under there. He then said, “Let me look in the attic.” This time, when he came back, he had a different result. “Probably what you heard was a baby squirrel or a small flying squirrel or maybe a field mouse that fell down between the sheet rock of this short wall here.” “I know it sounded louder than a small animal, but the sound was just amplified by the chamber.” He handed us his card and said, “If you hear the scratching again, call me on my cell. But more than likely, whatever it was has died and you probably won’t even know anything about it.”