First it was ticks. Then spiders. What next? A mouse, that's what.
I came home from Wal-Mart about 3 a.m. this morning to find two of the cats sitting on my stove staring intently at the range hood. I shooed them off and started unpacking groceries. Then I heard it: scrabble, scrabble, thump...scrabble, scrabble, thump. Coming from the exhaust vent above the range hood. Something was in there. Something alive. I took the screens off the range hood and looked up in there. Nothing. I briefly considered calling WTB, but given the hour, I thought he might not appreciate it. So I went to bed. And I dreamed of birds nesting in my vent, or a squirrel that somehow burrowed in there.
When I woke up this afternoon, there were the cats again on the stove. I wonder if they kept a vigil there all night long? I called WTB who came right over. (Of course he did; that what he does.) He took the screens off the range hood and then turned on the fan. "Well," he said, "I don't hear anything getting ground up in the fan blades." So he turned the fan off and stuck a knife up in there to prop the vent open. At which point a teeny little mouse dropped out onto the stove. I threw a towel to WTB, he threw it over the mouse, and we ran outside and across the street with it. When we let it go, the mouse ran straight for Carl's house. What a good neighbor I am, giving a mouse to Carl.