Getting used to new shadows

Well, for those of you who have ever wondered what I get up to in my room alone, and I know there is many a curious mind out there, this story will shed a bit of light.

It takes a while to get used to a new place, the sound of the furnace clicking on and off, the dripping snow melting off the eavestroughs landing with a mini-crash on the concrete below, the creak in the floor in Alex’s office that’s always followed by six mini creaks, etc. And the feeling of the house is important –none of the rooms are creepy, we’ve scrubbed everything clean, and it’s starting to smell like our home. I have felt comfortable in this place from the moment we’ve set foot in it with the realtor. It truly has good energy.

My pseudo anxiety started the day we moved in. I had been at work all day while Alex managed the movers. By the time I got home all the smelly, sweaty men had left and Alex and the kids were swimming in boxes. I changed into my grubby clothes and started to work on a path through the mess and adventure into the nooks and crannies. I found myself in the storage area under the stairs playing with the built-in vacuum accessories, working on a plan to hang or tie them into a tidy group. There , on a ledge, I spot a tiny mouse trap. Hhhhhmmmm. “Why would they have had a mouse trap here?” I thought to myself, and actually said it out loud unknowingly as I heard Alex say “Is there anything dead in it?” “No. Just a little empty mouse trap.” I replied with a bit of suspicion in my tone.

So, that was about 20 days ago. Here and there I have been keeping my eyes open for rodents. I cleaned the downstairs bathroom and thought I may have seen mouse droppings in the cupboard. I have left items in specific places in said cupboard and have checked it daily to see if they’ve been moved– nothing. Maybe it was just dirt.I have been on the lookout for anything moving along the floors while I’m quietly typing or watching TV – nothing. I found little black specs under the kitchen cupboard and when I thought I finally had proof of something Alex came by and said “Oh sorry, I was just gonna clean that up, I dropped a bunch of coffee grounds when I was emptying the coffee machine.”

So I carry on with my semi-active rodent search.

About a week after we moved in I thought for sure I saw a small animal scurrying along the side of the house. Alex and I were in her office, laughing about some email, and it just so happens that her computer is under the window. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something dark in colour, the size of a small cat, run from the front of the neighbours house along the side to the back. “AHA. Did you see that?. I’m sure that was a rat.” “There’s no rats around here” she said flippantly. “No, I definitely saw something. If it wasn’t a rat then it was something else, but something just ran past the window.” I don’t think she takes me very seriously when I’m hyper like that, I think she just puts up with me cause she knows it’ll pass quick. But now I had proof.

The next morning was when we discovered that we had a bevy of quail living in the underbrush behind our house. There must have been about 20 of them - a mummy quail, some daddy quail, lots of baby quail, and I’m sure there were some aunts and uncles – we didn’t have a chance to interview them at length. We saw them crossing the street, slowly walking along in a straight line like when we were school girls in our Sacred Heart uniforms out on a field trip. My friend Wendy says that they are able to fly but they just choose not to. Sort of remind me of my children; they are able to go to sleep without whining, they just choose not to.So, I have resigned myself to the fact that the animal I saw scurrying beside the house was one of them. My mind felt rested, my shoulders felt lower, I was content. Until last Thursday.

It was an evening like any other. Dinner was done, we had read to the children in their respective beds and Alex had gone downstairs to her office to check on any new emails. I put the kettle on, and went into the bedroom to put my pyjamas on and get ready for an hour or so vegging in front of the TV. The lights were dimmed in the hallways so as to encourage the children to fall asleep and I left my bedroom lights off as I could see easily with the light from the ensuite bathroom. The house was dead quiet. I was in my panties, standing at the foot of our bed, when I threw a night shirt up over my head. “What was that?” I froze. As the shirt was coming down over my face I saw a shadow or something move quickly along the wall outside my bedroom. “Damn, it, what the hell was that?” You have to understand that I was balancing my anxiety with the importance of keeping quiet so as to not wake up the children. I kept thinking to myself “You’re crazy, there’s nothing in the hallway. It was probably one of the kids, or the cat.” So, in my panties and shirt I walk quietly around the house checking in on the kids (both sound asleep), checking on the cat (passed out on the sofa). And Alex is downstairs. I’m getting nowhere. I consider myself a good detective, and I suddenly have an almost awakening – what if the shadow was from my shirt flying above my head. Could I really have flicked it so fast it looked like it ran across the wall? Let’s see. I took the shirt off, assumed the exact spot I was in before and started throwing the shirt up as if to wear it repeatedly and watching the wall across the hall.

I must have done it about 10 or 15 times. Standing in front of the bed, almost at my bedroom door, in my panties and nothing else, quickly putting the same shirt on with my head turned like an awkward half-dead duck’s head, watching the shadow. I saw a couple of shadows that may have been the one I saw originally but not exactly. Then the real awkward moment came. Shirt half on my body, legs manoeuvred at the oddest angle, I looked 6 inches to the right. I was looking straight out the large window above my front door, straight into the house across the street. "Shit!" It’s amazing what we’ll stop doing if we know that someone may be watching. You see, the neighbour across the street uses his garage as an extra sitting room, and I quite often see him in his garage, puttering around with some hobby, and he always waves. And there he was. “Yup, now they know that crazy people moved into their street.” Was all I could think. At that moment I decided to be convinced by the experiment that I had created the shadow and it was not some rodent in my house. I had solved the mystery. I put the rest of my pyjamas on, in the bathroom, and made a tea. “What are you up to sweetie? “ Alex calls from downstairs. “Nothing.”

It’s over. There are no rodents, the quail have even moved somewhere else. There are no mouse droppings. There’s just my paranoia. Take a little Rescue Remedy and get used to the new house.

Now, explain to me why last night I had this dream that I looked out my kitchen window and the back yard was covered in little weird creatures. They had faces of gophers and the back sides of squirrels. They were everywhere I tell you, and all I kept saying to Alex was “See, I told you, I told you.”