For those of you who knew me at Baylor, do you remember the little white house I lived in the last year? It was really cute, but literally could have been a zoo.
Yesterday, I came home and I saw a cat crawling under my house. At first I thought, he must be cold, poor thing. But then I remembered the mating cats that lived under my house in Waco, and I didn't feel so sorry for the cat anymore. Then all I could think about was waking up at 2:00 in the morning to banging coming from under my bed, yelping, screeching and other noises I would rather not describe. The housing company caught them, but then my roommate felt sorry for them and let the out of the cage. They were also the beginning of the animal onslaught. Once the cats were re-caught and released in a new area, a possum, followed.
One night I heard something funny coming from the kitchen. When I went in, a little head popped out from behind some cans and hissed at me. I whacked it with a broom and it crawled under my stove. Possums either "play possum" or emit a smelly green substance from an unmentionable place. Unfortunately for me, it chose the latter defense mechanism before running into a hole under our kitchen cabinet. The next day I tried to get my friend Brett to give me his BB gun, but he convinced me that was illegal in the city limits and gave me a golf club to protect myself with instead. The next night, I heard it in the kitchen again, and I watched it try to open a screw top container of Kool-Aide while I called 911. A nice man from animal control came to take it away and luckily, I didn't have to use the golf club.
Following the possum, we had a raccoon. One evening I was grading papers and I heard what can only be described as a wounded man crawling on his belly dragging his legs behind him in our attic. I remembered the night before my roommate told me that she saw a raccoon so big that all other raccoons would be scared. I called animal control again, but they told me they couldn't come until the next day. With some internet research, I realized raccoons didn't like light or music so I spent the night with radios blaring and all the lights in the house on. The next day animal control put cages in our attic and caught an entire little raccoon family.
After the possum, when we were moving out we had at least one rat. My two roommates had already left, and it was only me and the little guy. It was then that I realized I was really glad to leave the little house. I only hope the cat I saw yesterday was not the start of this whole process again!
