Night of the Living Sciuridae Carolinensis

[jack_babalon]

I have my man Jacques here at the Witch House along with his plucky assistant/girlfriend, Lady O'hara. We're standing there in the living room that doubles as bedroom around the perimter of my futon, conducting an all hands audio reconnaissance. I've got the lights off. The radio off. The Fans off too. Not aone says a word. Jacques and I have our heads tilted at an angle to allow the radar of the ears to better scan the room.

"Schzzzz-Schzzzz-schzzz" this quick burst of scratching noise starts and stops a few feet above our faces.

"Do you hear that?" I ask in a whisper. I know they did but I feel compelled to say it outloud as if the act of framing the moment in a question will s. They both nod without breaking eye contact with the source of the sound.

Then another noise, this time a pitter-patter of tiny footsteps scrambling along the attic floor ...

"ppp-ppp
....ppp-ppp
ppp-ppp
....ppp-ppp
ppp-ppp
....ppp-ppp
ppp-ppp
....ppp-ppp
ppp-ppp

....

"Schzzzz-Schzzzz-schzzz" - the burrowing noise continues now directly over a four foot drop from my pillow. There is more noise, something is running along the inside of my walls. A disembodied hand that seems to be racing around on the room on fingers thick as pipes. Finally I have to ask: "So whaddya think - Rats?"

"Squirrels" Jacques answers authoritatively. Of course the trouble is Jacques answers everything authoritatively! Whether he is right or wrong, whether asked or not, he speaks with an unequivocable confidence that invests even the most passing remark of his with an immovable certainty.

"Squirrels?" I repeat incredulous. Where the hell is the gothic-horror romance in squirrels? No, it has to be rats... red beady eyes... hissing fangs... bodies plump with pestilence and hatred... crawling around me invisibly... some creepy shit to spice up the atmosphere...

...but Squirrels? Vincent Price didn't have squirrels in his attic! Lovecraft wasn't conjuring spine-chilling tales of nut-hoarding vermin! Dracula's crypt wasn't crawling with a bunch of bushy tailed rodents scittering about! What kind of haunted house was my landlord running here anyway?

"Yeah, we had squirrels at my parents house... they sounded just like that." O'hara offers. Her voice is a lolipop falsetto and she punctuates her statements with a swing off her big gray-blue Felix the Cat clock eyes tick-tocking from me to the ceiling and back again.

"See!" Jacques motions with a spread of his arms that implies there can be no further doubt.

"I think its rats!" I say listening to the creature run along to another spot in the ceiling to resume its efforts to claw its way through into my room.

"Of course you do" Jacques dismisses the statement with that unique quack of a laugh of his, "you don't want to tell people that you're Witch-House is currently haunted by... da-da-daaaa...Squirrels!"

O'hara covers her giggle with the flat of her fingers.

"Its not that" even though I know it is, "Its... well how do you know they're squirrels."

"That's how squirrels sound" Jacques says almost astonished that i'm not convinced, "its freezing out and they're dropping out of the trees and making their way in to the nearest warm spot there is... which happens to be here."

"Schzzzz-Schzzzz-schzzz" - the squirrel-rat-whatever-the-fuck-it-is scratches right on cue.

"Alright fuck it!" I turn the radio back up and click the fans on until the sound drowns out in a tide of white noise. Jacques and O'Hara smile at each other in that disgusting telepathic language people who have been fucking steadily seem to have.

I don't care!

Rat. Squirrel. Attic-Goblin. Whatever... it's still unsettling as fuck laying awake at night while animals try to claw their way through the surface of the roof right above your head.

It'd just happen to be a lot cooler if they weren't squirrels.

Comments

[catwalk.livejournal.com]

unless they turn out to be cannibalistic zombie squirrels!

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Here's hoping!

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if you've got "Schzzzz-Schzzzz-schzzz" then I'd agree you've got squirrels.

Take heart, though, remember that as it gets colder, the spiders will be moving inside as well... they're plenty creepy.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

And a wonderful source of protein as well!

[vanian.livejournal.com]

Or it could be a possum - they're creapier than rats! We had a whole family one winter under our bathtub in Buckhead - you shoulda seen Jonny standing attack stance with Buds Destroyer baseball bat scared as hell - on his futon but a few inches off the ground ... now who's the "uncool one"???

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

You know its funny you mention that night... I was just thinking about it the other day.

[efire360.livejournal.com]

Don't knock the squirrels.
Just look at what those harmless, little bunnies can do!

Oh and the sheep. I don't even want to think about the sheep.


However, I have seen actual rats in trees in the midnight hour. It could be rats, cats or squirrels.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Or its all three coordinating an attack on me!

[vanian.livejournal.com]

Yeah sheep! Have you seen that movie Black Sheep?? A bunch of sheep go on a rampage and terrorize the town and eat people - no lie

Could be a rat...

[kittenspeaks.livejournal.com]

Many life times ago the (ex) husband and I lived in a shitty little quadroplex in Grant Park just off I-20. At some point the city decided to come out and clean out all of the brush and vegetation between the highway and our apt. This caused all of the animals living there to move into the houses nearby.
We started hearing noises in the ceiling. We complained to our slum-lord who did, as expected, absolutely nothing. So, one of the people in the building crawled into the ceiling to investigate, place traps, whatever. He tells us that all evidence points to squirrels.

So, a few weeks later there is some scratching, an odd thump next door and a scream. I scurried next door to find my useless hippie neighbor screaming her head off. I look in the direction that seems to be causing her screams. Sitting on her bedside table box was a rat. And by rat I mean huge ass scary bristly black looks like it swallowed a basketball rat.

She screamed more. I laughed. The Rat was scared as all hell and had nowhere to go since it had fallen through the ceiling into a corner and was trapped there by a screaming hippie.

I solved the problem by flipping the bedside table box onto the rat and then calling animal control. The rat, who was determined enough to chew through the ceiling, had no inclination what-so-ever to chew through a box and free itself into the lair of the screaming hippies.

Jacques and plucky O'Hara...

[(Anonymous)]

All's we're saying is that it *has* to be squirrels. It makes perfect sense. And rats are *so* last millenium... Plus, all the other great literateurs and fictional darklings have made rats their mainstay... It's indubitably and unquestionably the fuzzy tailed limb-rat, probably come home to roost in your ceiling and nook-nook the winter away with their twitching tails and scritchy-scratching and until their unkillable spoor replaces your insulation with their own feces. Unless of course they have human faces and start talking to you about their witchresses on the other side. Then they're rats. Most certainly.