Noises in the night

A Post a Day in May 21/31

I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. I'm not generally kept awake by noise, but certain noises make me instantly alert. This noise was unfamiliar to me and, thus, caught in my mind: What could it be? Where was it coming from? What was making it?

But I continued to lay in bed, comfortable, not keen to be disturbed. However, the noise continued, and I continued to be annoyed by it, so, eventually, I forced myself to get up to investigate.

The bedroom was beside the kitchen, and it was from there I thought the noise was coming. Without an easy overhead light to flick on, I grabbed the flashlight and moved it around the kitchen to see which appliance was making the noise — the fridge? the stove? the taps? All these inanimate things have their own peculiar gurgles and burps and hums, but, this night, the noise didn't seem to be coming from any of them.

And the noise was persisting.

I turned around and shone the flashlight up along the wall where, I now realized, the noise was coming from. And now that I was so close and paying focused attention, I could make out that it was a sort of metallic sound, like something clinking against something metal.

Hang on. If the noise was something clinking that must mean…must mean the something making the noise was not inanimate…but was something alive. And in this cottage that could mean only one thing: a mouse!

And yes, damn it, there was the mouse, caught in my flashlight’s beam: sitting in the woven basket on the shelf, pleased as punch, scrabbling away with its little paws and making that noise as the light cord, dangling just there, was moved by the creature’s antics and rattling to make the noise.

Eeeek! I’m keen on the outdoors but less enthusiastic about it when it migrates in on four scrabbly little feet. I called in Val for the rescue and rescue the mouse she did: caught the little blighter by its tail, plopped it into a jar, slapped a plate over it,  and carried it outside where it belongs. That was our first fall in the cottage, and it wasn’t our last encounter with mice indoors. That Christmas, our cat Lewis darted behind the sofa and came out with a mouse in his jaws. Oy. He dealt with that one. 

We spent the next months patching up the entry points and generally bringing the cottage up to snuff. Now, more than ten years later, the night noises are, actually, the (old) fridge humming its odd tune. Nonetheless, after we have been away from the cottage for many months over the winter, I am always trepidatious when I first open the door again in spring: What awaits us? 

The other day, I made a quick there-and-back trip to the cottage, to see how the place had fared in our absence over the very long and cold winter, fully expecting disaster in the form of problems both animate and inanimate. But there were none! Everything was as it should be.

Let the season begin.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.