And all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring,
Except for...
Last Saturday didn't start particularly well for our interloper, or at least one of our interlopers, if we get really unlucky.
Basically, and not to elaborate too much for anyone just contemplating their breakfast, the Snap Trap I put down did it's job, ("AutumnWatch fans, look away now...), and the creature was found bereft of life and needing disposing of, which is not a job for the squeamish, I can tell you.
The Beloved did it... I held the (double) bags open to receive the body.
Somehow it looked simultaneously both more and less harmless in this state, and, whilst we felt terribly guilty and bringing it to this end, we knew that we'd given it the humane trap option (which it had declined), and put enough deterrents down to persuade it to move out, but it had stuck around and, to be frank, knowing its fate is a lot better than merely wondering whether it's gone.
Anyway, after that start, for us the rest of the weekend was spent in a cleaning and de-cluttering frenzy as we set about scrubbing down anywhere where we thought that its grubby little paws might have touched whilst simultaneously being on the alert for any manifestations from any of its cousins and putting that ghastly expanding foam into anywhere we thought might have been an access point.
We hope they don't find that stuff to be tasty at all, although I suspect that it's lethal, given that I spent much of the weekend masked and gloved like I was in an episode of "The X-Files".
(Kids - "The X-Files" was a long-ago TV series about investigating paranormal activity, UFOs and such, and there were often chaps in Haz-Med suits about dealing with their fictional interlopers. It was pretty good, at least for the first few years, and then - as you'll find with most things as you get older - then got a little disappointing and rather outstayed its welcome.)
Honestly, talk about over-reacting, but I suspect that there are medical professionals dealing with those awful outbreaks of disease in Africa who are less well protected than we were last weekend. (Bet I still manage to come down with something lurgy-like, though...)
Some discoveries were alarming, to say the least.
Inside the fireplace we thought we'd found one of its hidey-holes, and we duly swept it all up, despite most of it being debris that had cascaded down the chimney for what is very probably several years now.
The worst though was when we started moving the cookery books from the lower shelf in the alcove and discovered just where it had hoarded all of the grain it had removed from that microwaveable grain hot water bottle that it had emptied.
To be honest, you do have to admire the tenacity of the wee timorous beastie if it shifted that much of the stuff a mouthful at a time, whilst simultaneously being utterly appalled by the amount of time that it must have had to do it without us even noticing, and also, you really can't help wondering whether it did it alone...
Meanwhile, it had also, perhaps ironically, nibbled at several of the cookbooks, whilst taking a particular shine to Nigella, which should probably tell us all something significant, I suppose, especially as all nibbled books went straight into the bin bags with little in the way of regret - even though, if the circumstances were different, they'd still be much-treasured volumes I'm sure.
Sadly, after a weekend filling more bin bags than the bin men will reasonably remove, I wish that I could say that there haven't, as yet, been any more sightings, but we remain on jittery alert, waiting for this saga of horror to continue, and finding droppings in unlikely places to suggest that it's far from being over...
There are less than two weeks to go until Christmas, and still we can't even begin to give any thought towards that...
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