The other night we were all in bed. We do that a lot at night. It was also dark, which I’ve noticed also happens a lot at night. I was minding my own business (which dad says does NOT happen a lot) and almost asleep when mom suddenly said, “what is he doing over there?” Dad rustled around and looked down at me and said, “uh oh. He’s asleep.”
I wasn’t sure why me being asleep was an “uh oh” moment, until I realized I could hear a chewing/gnawing sound that they probably thought was me. When they realized it wasn’t me, and they knew it wasn’t Raven… that meant it was something else…
Did you hear scary music just now? Something like…
So they sat up and listened, and I sat up and listened, and Raven snored, and the sound continued like it was in the ceiling right above us.
Skritch, skritch, skritch…
Skattle, skattle, skattle…
Chew, chew, rustle, skritch, skritch, drag, rustle… [THUMP]
That last part was dad. He got up and thumped the ceiling and the sound stopped. That’s good and bad of course, because now we knew… it’s alive.
“Well super,” said dad, (he didn’t say super). We’ll have to get somebody out here tomorrow because I’m not climbing through the attic all the way over to this room to try to find a funny mouse. (He didn’t say funny.)
We all tried to go back to sleep, but as soon as we were quiet it started again — loudly. Mom and dad were wide awake for hours. It definitely sounded like a couple of mice were up there playing video games and eating crunchy snacks. Every so often mom or dad would get up and turn on a light, or do pretty much anything and the sound would stop, only to start again when they went back to bed.
It was a long night.
The next day we called the wildlife cops on them, and a guy showed up to go into the attic and try to catch or trap or dynamite or otherwise evict the mice.
Raven and I helped out by politely staying behind the locked doors of our kennels while the guy went all over the place. He surveyed the whole house and laid about 20 separate mouse traps to make sure it would be a total slaughter. But he also said he really wasn’t seeing anything that indicated mice were about. (Apparently mice tend to drop stuff like extra poker chips or empty chip bags and beer bottles and stuff.)
Dad said there HAD to be something up there, and asked about putting a trap in the funky raised ceiling we have in the bedroom. The raised ceiling looks like somebody cut a square out of the normal ceiling pushed it up a foot, and built a little balcony all the way around it. There’s a string of christmas lights up there that you can turn on to softly light the room, but no real access from the attic. It would be the perfect place for mice to hang out, have a beer, and just watch people in the room below.
The guy said he’d never seen mice in one of those areas, but said he’d put a trap up there too, just to be safe. So he went up a ladder and looked around. Pretty soon he laughed and came back down.
“Prepare yourself, ” he said to dad, “and have a look. There’s a live bat stuck up there.”
So dad climbed up and sure enough, a bat was “glued” by one wing to the “bottom” of the ledge up there, pretty much right over his pillow!
The guy got a plastic bag and some gloves, and put the bat in the bag. Then he stood there holding the flopping, flapping bag and said apparently the bat made it in and managed to find an old glue trap somewhere. That got his wing sticky, and he ended up there, stuck below the christmas lights. When he would skritch and claw and try to move, he rattled the strand of lights and it sounded exactly like chewing. And because it was literally 6 feet over our pillows, it was LOUD. His clawing and wiggling sounded like multiple mice.
Dad was mostly happy the bat didn’t crawl over the edge and fall down and get stuck to his pillow or face or something!
A couple of days later (once the snow was all melted outside) the bat guy came back and walked around the roof and sealed a couple of spots where the bat might have come in, so I guess we’re in the clear. He said there weren’t any signs of bat activity in the attic either, so hopefully it was just a fluke.
All I know is, it’s very quiet now and when somebody asks, “what’s he doing over there?” I’m really doing something. 
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