The Lodger

There's a something that lives under my house.

I should start at the beginning: our house doesn't have a basement, it has a crawlspace. (It really isn't good for much of anything — too damp for storage, and not all that accessible, but there you are.) There's a small wooden door on the side of the house, but the most of the panel had rotted away by the end of last year, and I put off replacing it. This year, after all the recent raccoon activity, I decided the time had come to do something about that.

Now, I was just about certain that someone — or something — had taken up residence in the crawlspace while it was open (not for any particular reason, it just seemed more likely than not), and I certainly didn't want any harm to come to them. So I left a small plate of dry cat food and a container of water close to the entrance before putting the new door in place. Sure enough, within a day, some of the food had been eaten — but not all that much, not nearly as much as I expected.

I left the door open, just enough, with the hope that whatever it was might wander off.

I tried again, a few days later, this time with another small plate of cat food on a piece of cardboard, and — this was my brilliant idea! — surrounded it with baby powder. Whatever it was, at least it would leave footprints I might be able to identify. And it did — there was lots of traffic (at least, that what I think it was), and a few distinct prints. I think it's a mouse. Or mice. The prints seemed larger than I would have expected, but who knows, perhaps mice have big feet.

At least it isn't another raccoon.