Creatures in the walls

There are some kind of creatures in some of our walls.

There used to be squirrels in the attic, but Bern got a machine whose purpose is to make a noise that apparently makes squirrels psychotic if they don't leave. So we don't hear squirrels skritching across the ceiling of our bedroom or TV room anymore.

But I hear something in the walls of the dining room. I would like to convince myself that it is a family of those Brownies (wasn't that the name?) that lived in the walls of a house in New York in books I used to read to our children. (I'm not sure, by the way, that convincing kids that little people live in the walls is a particularly good idea....)

But I know these aren't Brownies or Fairies or Elves. And I'm calling someone I found in the phone book to come next week and tell us what to do.

Someone came last year, when the squirrels were playing what sounded like soccer in our attic. He assured us there was no way for them to get in except through a window we kept open in the attic with a fan to blow out hot air in the summer. So we closed the windows and got the crazy making squirrel machine.

Mostly I hear them in the wall near the dining room fireplace that we never use. We don't use it because a chimney sweep (there are still such professionals, though they don't look like Dick Van Dyke) told us there were chinks in the bricks in that chimney. Fixing it would have been like a million dollars, or at least the equivalent of that in our budget. So we filled the grate area with about 70 candles. The chimney in the kitchen fireplace is fine, so we use that in the winter. (By the way, a fireplace in the kitchen is one of the best ideas I can think of.)

When the squirrels were holding parties in the attic, I also got one of those squirrel traps that are open at each end but close when a squirrel goes in. Not killing the squirrels was high on our list for possible solutions. Driving them crazy with noise seemed preferable somehow. The quality of life of a psychotic squirrel, though not intense, seemed better than that of a dead squirrel.

On that subject--death--I heard today that four deceased people were on ballots around the country during the mid-term elections. They died after the ballots were printed and before the election. One of them won. Imagine being defeated by a dead guy....If 'brain dead' was the same as 'dead dead' I would suggest that quite a number of dead people won in that election....Oh well, I'll have to get over it. My next door neighbor, Mark, said today what Mark Twain once said, (I don't know if Mark knew he was quoting Twain...) "If you don't like the Congress, wait two years..."

Anyway, whatever is in the walls I no longer object to killing. There's just something a little eerie about having creatures in your walls....