12:35 AM
We’ve had a little excitement tonight. I was doing s crossword in bed. Torii was snuggled against me all cute with her head awkwardly in my right armpit, at least until she could find a more difficult position. And she suddenly jumped up and ran over to the air vent.
(Brief history: the room I use as the master bedroom was a late (1960s) addition to the house that was not connected to the central heating/air system. Until last year when I finally had a vent added when I replaced the a/c unit. It makes the room so . . . pleasant. We like our vent very very much.)
I got up and got my glasses from the living room and looked into and around the vent. And I didn’t see or hear anything odd. Then I foolishly returned my glasses to the living room. I knew it was foolish when I did it.
Because, yes, I would soon need those glasses again.
(Another brief history: we survived the night of the rodents a few months ago. Torii still remembers it as the best night of her life. Multiple small rodents ran around the first floor and she caught them and played with them and killed one which she dropped onto the cushion beside my head at 3:30 AM. So we are very very sensitive to critters in the night.)
I left the light on. Just in case. Maybe half an hour later, Torii started playing with . . . something. There’s almost no light in my room thanks to high quality thermal blackout curtains and only one small table lamp. So I couldn’t see what she saw; I just got a sense of something moving on the lovely dark hardwood floor I put in several years ago.
So I got up and retrieved my glasses again and back down the three steps to my room because did I mention it’s an addition from the 60s so of course it’s sunken. It was probably a conversation piece back in its day.
And there it was, . . . something on the floor. The best I could tell was overly large insect rather than small rodent. I grabbed the first thing to hand, an pillow case, and snatched up (I hoped) whatever it was.
I shook out the pillow case in the kitchen trash can. I sort of think something fell in, but I couldn’t tell what and I wasn’t totally certain.
I went back to bed but definitely not to sleep. I kept my glasses by the alarm clock this time. Because, yes, I would need them again.
Torii didn’t believe het new toy was gone. She kept going around the box where I’d caught it. She even tried to climb inside it, but was foiled by her weeness. The box is like 18” tall. I drifted off, not a deep sleep as both the bedside lamp and bright kitchen light were on now. I could hear her scrabbling around that box.
I finally got up. Again.
And I pulled everything out of the box.
And just I was reaching in for the dust bunny that was the last thing in the box, the dust bunny moved.
I almost dropped the box. But I managed to carry it up into the kitchen, Torii super excited and trying to trip me on those damned three steps.
It was a cricket. I think it was injured from its climb up the vent. I took the box out to the front porch and turned it upside down over the roses and shook it a bit to be sure. And when I looked inside the box it was finally really empty.
Torii is still weird and pacing. Where’s the fun new toy? When are we going back to bed? Why does mama freak when she (Torii) drops her current favorite mousie beside her (mama, meaning me) on the couch?
There’s no snazzy wrap-up to this post. No “And that’s why y’all should always” final thought. Nope. Just Torii chasing her mousie across the living room hardwood and me trying to tell if it’s live or a toy and whimpering every time she bats it toward me.
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