A mouse in the house

except not actually a mouse and not technically *in* the house

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a baby raccoon that snuck into our house, had a party in the kitchen, and then found itself without a means of egress while its extended family agitated on the other side of the transom window. (I wrote about other things, too—liminal spaces, the unheimlich, boundary crossing—this is a serious Substack, after all.) At the end, I offered to write about that time a baby rat wedged itself between the screen and the glass of our sliding door in my next post, and the demand for the rat story was so overwhelming (three readers, one of whom specifically asked for no pictures of said rat) that I’m bowing to popular demand. If you’re interested in seeing close-ups of a baby rat flattened between a screen and a glass slider, you can scroll all the way to the end of my previous post.

Not our actual house, although I wouldn’t be mad if it was. Photo by Manel & Sean on Unsplash

I am not good with rodents. I find them skittery and upsetting. I’m not proud of this, but wh…