The "Gnarling Noise in the Kitchen" Story

It was an ordinary day. A frosty morning, the kind you have to scrape a layer from your windshield. Luckily I'm sitting in the family room watching TV with Carol before we both have to head out to work. All of a sudden she grabs the remote and pushes the "Mute" button and cocks her head. Something is wrong, I know. I look at her and ask, "What's the matter?" "Don't you hear that gnarling noise?" She responds. Then I hear it. Coming from the island where our family room meets our kitchen. "Not again!" I say to her. Yep! Got creatures in the crawl space. Seems that every winter we have small inhabitants who try to make a home in the cabinets below our oven and range. Our house sets on a stone quarry and part of it has just crawl space beneath the first floor since the rock is so hard and it was too costly to blast more than a small area for a basement for the house. When the weather turns cold the varmits find a way into the house and under the space that only has the crawl space. The area under the island has holes that are drilled for the wiring and they make their way through them. If you bang your feet on the floor enough it sends them back under the insulation into the crawl space. They then make their way underneath the house to the floor joists of the basement ceiling. In the rear of our basement I have a workroom where I work on my photos and stained glass. The ceiling is suspended from the floor joists and at times you can hear them running around on the ceiling tiles. Well, time for the peanut butter on the traps routine. Hate to do that, but it's either that or wait for them to ruin our house. I push one of the ceiling tiles up and look around inside the dropped ceiling. Wow! There is one in a trap from last spring. I thought I had checked all of them long ago. This one is almost a skeleton by now. Put it in a bag and take it out to the trash. I have three traps that I set yearly and use peanut butter on them. The kind of peanut butter that has peanut pieces in it since that is what I like the best and figure they will also. I keep a box of rubber gloves and a box of tongue depressors in my work room just for this yearly task. Put the gloves on, grab the remaining two traps from the ceiling and spread the peanut butter on them and set them. Have to be careful since the traps really hurt the fingers when they go off. How do I know? Go figure! Stuck them in the ceiling and put the panel back in place. Now this all happened about a week ago. The next day I found two in the traps and couldn't locate the other trap. Now what, I though. Finally found it about five feet from the original place I had place it, with a live mouse in it. Seems he had just his tail in it and was walking around the ceiling tiles with it attached to his tail. Felt sorry for the guy so I took the trap with him still in it to the front door and let him go on the front lawn. I figure he'll learn his lesson or I'll have him another time. A day later I had three more. Hard to imagine how many more I will eventually get. And, we have a few stray cats in the neighborhood! Can't be doing their job. But I have to keep trying or else it will eventually cause my kitchen island to fall through the floor. Well, this morning we were sitting in the family room again reading the morning paper and watching the news shows on TV when Carol asked me if I hear that noise in our fridge. Sounds like a clunk as the motor stops. Now what can that be? I grabbed the vacuum and told her it's either a dead mouse caught in the motor or we probably have so much cat hair under the fridge that it is causing the problem. I pulled the fridge from the wall and removed the cardboard back. Grabbed the vacuum and started to clean all the junk out of the motor area when I see something strange. "Carol, come here and look at this," I say to her. In the corner of the fridge, tucked in amongst the insulation, is a small supply of cat food; maybe a dozen pieces. Someone has made our fridge into their home it looks like. Now this didn't just happen since the food we have been giving the cat for the last year or two is different than what is in the nest. This may have been the mouse that our oldest cat, Otis, brought to our room one night last year, dropped it on the floor, meowed loudly to wake us, and then began to chase after again. After a few screams from the one left in the bed, I was able to catch it in the trash can and deposit it outside. Last time he ever told us about one of his catches. Every day now I must make a trip to the basement to check to see how much more peanut butter I will need. Wonder if you can claim that as a tax deduction? It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.