Bump in the night

A creature's living in our garden shed.

I saw it first one late spring day when I reached in the shed to get my clippers. A grayish blur scurried away from me quick as a squirrel escaping a dog, and in fact I figured a squirrel had gotten closed in there somehow. But I glimpsed it there again and again throughout the summer. It's startling and just a bit frightening. What if the creature is rabid? What if it's a mean old raccoon? It's probably not. But what if it is? Just in case, I throw open the shed door with a bang and a shout.

No one else ever saw this creature, neither my husband nor the children, and I don't think they quite believed in it. Jennifer's afraid of the dark, hey? Seeing ghosts! Last week, however, the creature made a mess in the shed. It knocked over pots, tore open my packets of seeds, gnawed on some boards and left scat everywhere.

So, so. On Friday I threw open the shed door with a bang and a shout, and the creature scurried out so I could clean up after it. I thought that if I made the shed inhospitable -- if I cleared out any hiding places or bedding material -- it might go away. I swept and made piles of things that could be recycled, things that had to be trashed. The kids kept coming by with various sized containers, hoping to catch it. No, it's bigger than that! I'd say. Bigger than that, too! Since I'm the only one who'd seen it, only I could say: it's as big as Raincloud the guinea pig! But with a long tail!

An hour later -- after I'd gazed in satisfaction at my (comparatively) clean shed -- I heard a noise. A gnawing, like the guinea pigs gnawing on cardboard.

Oh no! I missed a box! It took that creature seconds, mere seconds, to make itself a new nest in the one box remaining in the shed.

Yesterday and today my husband has gone out to the shed armed with a flashlight, opening the door with a bang and a flourish just as I suggested ... and seen nothing. There's the box with a new hole it it, but nothing else. No creature.

Maybe we have a very messy ghost.