I am scared…I am terrified.
Trigger Warning: rodent infestation
So a couple weeks ago, my partner and I found little mice rice in the cupbords of our home. So we went to the hardware store, got some mouse traps and locked up all our food so now we only eat food out of the fridge.
That’s fine, we don’t have any pets, I’ll set up a bird seed trap to catch them all in the middle of the night. Our house we rent isn’t all that big so we’ll just take the mice to the humane society in a couple of days to ask what to do about them.
Wake up the next morning, look in the bucket, no mice.
Ok…I’m prepared, this will be a few days that’s fine. The bird seed looks to be at the same level, I dumped the whole bag in there so they really have no other food source, they’re going to have to come to this eventually.
A few days go by, Tuesday turns to Friday, my partner and I talk about the mice and he goes “should I get more bird seed?”
What
“Yeah, there’s no more bird seed in the bucket. Should I go grab more before I sit down for the night?”
I go to check the bucket.
It’s empty…no mice…not even a crumb of a shell left in it… it was standing straight up, the ramps for the mice to get onto it were still there, the mechanism was still functional.
Great…now what? I don’t want to poison them because then I’ll have dead mice stinking up my walls and they’ll hurt my neighbors pets if they get out of my house.
Whatever. I call my landlord to get back to them, tell them the traps aren’t working. He said “well it’s an old house so the walls are big enough I can probably find where they’re nesting, call an exterminator and whatnot, I’ll get back to you on that by Tuesday because all the places are off for the weekend.”
I’m trying to stay calm, I’m panicking, my partner is trying not to panic, we vacume and clean every surface and decide to just order takeout and play video games for the weekend.
I hadn’t seen the mice at this point, I wouldn’t until the exterminator showed up that next Thursday and showed me where the nest was and where they were storing all the bird seed. They didn’t run and scurry away the slunk and crawled on top of each other screaming hellishly as the exterminator bent down to try and grab one with a gloved hand.
Just regular feild mice, nothing out of the ordinary. Tried to but the shit out of the exterminators hand but he just scooped them up and put them in the 5 gallon bucket I used for the trap.
They screeched and howled something I had only heard in my dreams.
I asked him what he planned to do with them and he said “they’re just feild mice, did you use any rat poison?”
“No?”
“Sweeeet they make great food for my pets.”
“Oh what kind of pet do you have?” I asked because any time I hear about people pets I’m always curious on what they keep. I don’t mind rodents as long as they aren’t shitting in my Tupperware and eating my lucky charms.
“I’ve got snakes, lizards, a cat that would love to have some after their ring worm and botfly checkups. Hate to waste a perfectly good bucket of mice.”
Two weeks go by and my partner and I are no longer interrupted by the sounds of scurrying behind our headboard. We can now eat our breakfast with regular rice and not have to worry about brown bits in our pantry. But last night there was something clawing under my window. I was downstairs grabbing a snack and decided to cozy up and relax on the couch for a bit when out of the corner of my eye I see a shadow dart past my windowsill. I grab my phone and shine the flashlight expecting to see a tail or worse wings.
“Please don’t be roaches” I begged but something bigger was scratching it was heavy, until I heard shuffling and the rumbling of the siding.
I throw on my crocs to go out and check but I was too late as expected. There was a loose vertical board in the siding, definitely big enough for something cat sized to fit through.
Immediately, I text my landlord like “hey, I know it’s 3 am, but something found a gap in the siding, it could be a cat attracted to the leftover mice smell but could you help me get it out of the walls in the morning? I’m going to go lock the crawlspace so it can’t get back out again until we need to go in.”
I go up to bed, snuggle up with my partner, he tells me not to worry as bad but I am fully freaking out. It could be a cat, a raccoon, neighbors small dog, a fox is unlikely but still possible, we’re in suburbia, god I hope it’s not a skunk. It was 8 am before I finally fell asleep again.
My landlord texted me back saying that he’d send someone by to fix the siding and he’s calling animal control for the thing that might be in the wall. Everyone arrives at 4pm, my partner pauses his game, we talk, we show animal control where the crawl space is to enter the walls and the bring in a couple of loaded traps to put in different places around the house.
Sweet. Ok, uhh except all that was unnecessary. Animal control found where the bird seed pile used to be and backed into that corner was a coyote. There was a full grown 2 foot tall coyote who just sat there as animal control practicly walked it out of my house like it was a dog.
Days go by and I’m heading upstairs to bed and hear a similar scratching at my siding.
Fuck you! not again!
I go outside with my phone flashlight, I grab a stick and start waving it around telling the critter to get out but the bastard busted a crack into the siding again and managed to get into my fucking house.
Furious seeing its tail swat as it slunk between the boards I rushed inside to throw open the crawl space and in my underwear went to where the mice had the bird seed.
It was back…sitting… starring straight at me. I reached out to pick it up by the scruff and toss it outside.but before I could touch it I jolted awake in my bed.
I ran downstairs to check the siding, thinking it was a bad dream but no, the siding was still fucked. I went back into the crawl space to check out where I was the night before. I know it was stupid, I know I could probably get rabies, I just needed something, anything to confirm what happened.
It was still there, still starring. It wasn’t staring at me, it sat almost motionless, barely breathing. It was like it wasn’t looking at me, it was looking through me.
I stepped back turning around, which was extremely difficult to do in the crawl space, to see nothing. Just the dark void of the rest of the insides of my wall. Expecting it to jump out and scare me, the coyote stayed sat.
Fuck this shit, I’m out.
I crawled out of the crawl space waiting for something, anything to happen. I reached into my kitchen cupboard to grab the salt and imedately seal the door and the back side of my portch. I’ve watched enough supernatural to know when it’s time to throw in the towel.
There’s… a coyote in my dry wall. And I don’t know what to do.
I just hope it doesn’t start talking to me.
