Night of the Critter

At about 4:00 AM this morning, what I like to think of as "the neighbors' techno hour," Grace elbowed me in the shoulder.

"We have a critter in the bedroom."

The timing couldn't have been worse, but then, I kind of expected it. For some reason I'd had a particularly vivid day-turning-to-night dream as I drifted off about an intruder. I try to be prepared. I've got a fire poker under my side of the bed and I keep the doors locked. But last night we showed our place to a potential buyer/renter, and she asked about security. That must have sparked it. But then, in the deepest part of the night, my dreams about intruders had morphed into dreams about demons--the result of a YouTube video I'd stupidly watched months ago.

So, when she said we had a critter in the bedroom, I was positive it was either an illegal alien rapist or a damned creature from the Pit.

"I felt something on my hand," she said. "I flicked it and heard it scamper across the floor."
Okay, Grace probably didn't have an illegal alien rapist on her hand, and if it was a demon, I couldn't imagine what he was up to. Still, it was probably a spider. Worse.

"Damn," I muffled into the pillow. I clicked on the light and began the search.

I'd been telling her for a year now that the bed covers are NEVER to touch the floor. I mean, why make it easy for them to crawl up to our eyeballs to lay their eggs? So, it was very satisfying when she said, "I'm never letting the covers touch the floor again."

I put on a brave face, but I didn't relish the task at hand. After all, the last time we'd encountered a spider so large as to make AUDIBLE footsteps was back in our Washington Times days. We'd gone out to a little shelter in the National Arboretum to make out, and this monster spindly spider had dropped from the rafters onto the ground not three feet from us. We heard it hit and then right itself. I'd literally picked Grace up and thrown her behind me, and the spider chased us--literally chased us--out of the shelter. That sucker was almost as big as my hand. I'm not exaggerating.

Grace keeps an insanely tidy house, so I didn't have much to search. It wasn't behind the nightstand. It wasn't under the pillow on the floor. It wasn't under the bed. I sighed, realizing it was probably in the closet, but after tipping every shoe upside down, I couldn't find it there, either.

It was now 4:30. "Sorry, hon, but I think you imagined it."

She wasn't so sure, but she could tell by my mood that I wasn't really up for a Great Spider Hunt.

We clicked off the lights, pulled the covers to a pile in the center of the bed, and layed down in our little fort to sleep. Just as I was crossing back over, I heard it--scritch-scritch-scritch.
"Damn."

Lights came back on. I swept the same places as before. I went out to the hallway. I checked the tub (I'd seen a big one in there before, but he was easy to dispatch.)

Nothing. We switch sides of the bed because now she's practically laying on top of me. Lights out.

A few minutes later: Scritch-scritch-scritch. On the nightstand by my head.

Lights back on. "Damn it!" I fairly scream. I don't do well with limited sleep--especially when I know I only have two hours of sack time left.

Aha! I realize I haven't checked IN the nightstand where Grace keeps her clothes. I yell, "From Hell's heart I stab at thee!" and dump the drawers out of the nightstand. Panties are flying, but not in the good way. Panty-hose, socks, scarves. I'm now sitting in a pile of them. I no longer care if that damn spider touches my hand. I will crush him with my might fists of rage.
Nothing. The place is more sterile than the Pope's toilet.

I look around in frustration and now, for the first time...fear. We're dealing with a bug that no mere repellant or wadded toilet paper can handle. We're dealing with something...unnatural. A wormhole-equipped arachnid or possibly a bi-locater.

I debate leaving the lights on, but for some reason it feels more secure in the dark.
Whatever I did, it appears to have been the trick. No sounds. I start to drift, but the threshold has been crossed. Instead of dreams of demons, spaceships or war, I begin dreaming of my meeting with my boss today. Got to get things in order...got to compile a list of expected donations from my foundations...

Scritch-scritch-scritch.

We sit up simultaneously and look in the OPPOSITE direction. If I'm hearing it right, it's now ON our desk. Only now he's not being stealthy. He's in the computer wires. He's rustling some paper. HE'S HEADING OUR WAY!

I lay on the edge of the bed near the first "sighting." The glow of the alarm clock casts a blue pall over the corner of the room. I hear the scritching right under our bed, and then, it happens--
A gray-blue streak, almost too fast to register on the human eye, darts from behind the nightstand to the dresser across the room.

"Lights!" I say.

Grace hits the light and I dash to the end of the bed. "Shhh!" I say. "Be still."

All is quiet. The room is well lit, and the creature is almost certainly under the dresser. Sure enough, he darts out three inches beyond the bottom of it. He doesn't move, exactly. It's more like he's here and then he's there.

The vexing critter is a mouse. Not some vile, diseased-looking vermin, but the very template for all the cute, cuddly cartoon mice in the world. He's gray, with a little bit of tan on his back. He's got enormous radar dishes for ears. He's sitting on his hind legs, front paws held together reverently as if to plead, "Please, master, I am but a poor mouse in search of food. Might you spare a morsel?"

"Grace," I say, "Check him out. He's no monster."

Grace comes to the edge of the bed and sees him for an instant before he's just gone. "Cute," she says, "but he must die."

Sadly, I agree, and set the traps we bought after a mouse sighting this summer.

I come back to bed after trying to track him down again. "Man, I hate to have to kill the thing. I want to keep him as a pet."

"You're such a bleeding heart," she says.

Later, after 15 full minutes of scritch-free silence, Grace says, "You know, we just got a foretaste of what life will be like in three months."

I'd been thinking the same thing. "I know, I know," I say. "But you can't set traps for babies..."
And then the alarm went off. Time for a day.