Nuts.

I’ve been noticing something strange around the apartment, on those mornings when I’m sitting in the big bedroom, posting my stories. Every so often, I hear a strange noise, overhead.

No, I don’t think that the noise was coming from the poltergeist in the little bedroom. This is more of a scurrying sound, as if something is making its way across the floorboards of the attic. What it reminds me of, more than anything else, are the sounds I used to hear at the homestead, late at night, coming from inside the drop ceiling in our living room.

It has to be a mouse, I think to myself. Or, more likely, mice.

Sunday afternoon, Corb and I finally got around to wrapping up his enormous collection of nutcrackers (no, you actually did read that last sentence correctly), from Christmas, and lugged the boxes up into the attic. The entrance to the attic is in the hallway, right by our front door, and so, it was a short walk to the drop ladder that's brought down with a crash by a tug of a string, and a short climb up to our storage area, located in the back of the attic, which at this point in the year could keep a snowman perfectly happy.

As soon as we got to our storage bin, we heard the scurry. “Did you hear that?” I asked Corb, and grabbed on to his arm.

“I think I heard something,” he said, and started to play with the lock on the screen door, the one that allegedly prevents other people from getting into the thin mesh wire that protects our valuables.

As we were moving the nutcrackers into the storage area, we heard the scurrying again, to our left. I whipped my head around, and saw a small shadowy moving quickly across one side of the attic. “Did you SEE that?” I asked, jumping out of the storage area, quickly.

“I think we’d better make a call,” said Corb, moving to lock up the space and get the hell out of there.

Yesterday afternoon, Corb called me on the phone. “I just called the main office about the animals in the attic,” he said. “I’m not sure what’s disturbing me more—what’s up there, or what they told me.”

“What’s up there?” I asked.

“They said it’s a family of squirrels,” he replied.

“Oh, great! Just great. So what you’re telling me is that we could have been surrounded up there in that attic by a rogue family of squirrels, trying to de-nut us.”

“That’s not the worst part,” said Corb. “They’ve actually known about this for a while. They’re just waiting to see who comes in with the lowest bid, so they can decide who to hire to take care of the situation!”

I can’t exactly say that I’m surprised. We've lost three ternants in our apartment thi month, and I think the landlord's getting a little nervous. Last month, when Corb locked us out of the apartment, and I spent a half an hour stuck outside our balcony, we were charged $20 as a lockout fee. Never mind that the maintenance staff lives on site. Still, the chage was fine, I guess...except that the complex has been harassing us for the $20, ever since. We finally paid it last week, but it felt as if the place was going to shut down unless we paid it.

I don't know. Maybe when we were locked out, we should have just asked the squirrels to unlock the door for us.

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