An Early Morning Intruder

Sunday, 19 December, 2010, 2:21 AM:

I woke to a rustling that was obviously coming from outside. Late at night, when these sounds occur, I have to say my heart gets to racing a little. My wife trusts me to protect the house, and I do keep a fire bat under the bed - not just for breaking windows during fires. So I know, when there's a sound, it's up to me to confront whatever is lurking in the darkness.

But before I confront anything, I try to listen closely to determine what I'm up against. In the past, I've never been up against much: a child wandering around the house; neighbors up making a lot of noise outside, or even upstairs. The scariest moments I've had to confront up until last night is Liz crying about some nightmare she's had. Typically, I'm pretty asleep, and I hear her scream out for me. In my fog, I try to understand why she's crying - only to learn that it was a nightmare from which she needs a parent's comfort to calm her.

She would wake from a nightmare on this night, too, but that isn't the sound I was hearing at 2:21 AM.

Instead, the sound I was straining to hear was something I hadn't heard before. Foreign sounds are definitely the worst. At first, I couldn't locate the sound spatially. We live in a bottom-level condo that is partially underground. All of our windows are on the south side of the building. Each bedroom has its own window; ours has a sliding glass door leading to our back porch. As I strained to hear, I knew the sound certainly came from outside, but at times it sounded far away, as though someone were trying to open the blinds in one of the kids' rooms; at other times, it sounded quite close, like someone were on the back patio - right outside our glass door.

But, after a bit of straining, I was sure that whatever was making the noise was on our back porch.

I now knew where the noise was coming from. I lay for a few moments trying to determine what was making the noise. I'll admit, I was a little scared to get out of bed and look out the blinds.

Sometimes, it's harder to be brave when my wife doesn't hear the noises. I suppose that's because if all else fails, I want her to hear me falling to floor and writhing in agony when whatever the disturbance is beats me up or shoots me. Even if there's nothing she could do at that point, it would be nice to know she knows I'm risking my life for her.

It was quite a relief when, through the fog of being just awoken, mixed with the emotion of having something just outside our door, to hear my wife speak up:

"I think there's an animal on our patio."

I could be brave now, because when she said that, I was finally able to place the sounds that were being made: a rustling of leaves (we have something of a collection on our porch from all the storms lately) and the scratching on the glass of the door, that could not have come from anything larger than a ... cat? No, too small. Mouse? No, too large. Rat? Outside of our door?

Sort of.

Turns out it was a muskrat (we have a creek that runs through our property). I'm glad I didn't have to use the fire bat. But I did have to get the thing off our porch. Since the porch is underground, the walls are cement; a cat could get in or out; a muskrat would be stuck there all night, scratching at our window.

Anyway, long story short: went to the dumpster and dragged a large tree limb over to see if I could get it to climb out on its own; that explains all the sticks in the picture; he used it as a good hiding place. So I removed the limb and used a shovel to...

...scare it into a bucket, which I promptly threw over the side of the porch (hey, I thought it could be rabid or something). I think it was just as relieved to be out of there as I was to get back into bed.

Home Security

1 Fire-bat

1 Shovel

1 Bucket

A whole lotta courage!

A pinch of wimpering in bed

P.S. In the middle of the ordeal, Liz woke from her nightmare - which I think turned out to be a half frightened/half irritated man walking through her house trying to decide how to get a muskrat off the porch.