Attack of the VERMIN!

So the furnace repair guy came today. We pulled out the couch, opened the furnace closet and moved a couple of boxes out so he could access the guts of the thing. As soon as he had the main panel off, he said, "Oh. Here's your problem." He holds out this rubber tube that clearly was meant to connect this one doohicky to this other nub-thingie. Except that the tube had been CHEWED TO DEATH.

Peter was watching on. "Chris? Do you have mice down here?"

"Not that I'm aware of..." I said. "If I did, you'd be the first to know (besides the cats)."

The repair guy fixed the tube, and the heat turned on (THANK GOD). Peter says he's gonna stay and clean up the mouse stuff. Sure, I think to myself -- there's probably a couple of droppings in there. When he goes to get the vacuum, though, I take a look for myself.

OMG.

There's mouse droppings and blood everywhere! BLOOD! And a bag of my Hallowe'en supplies has been shredded. I look a little closer, and discover that the little bugger had nested with fake spider web inside a plastic skull -- how gothic. But even weirder was the fact that it had apparently been living of off a tube of fake vampire blood -- hence the blood everywhere. What a disturbing find that chewed tube was.

Anyway, Peter's out buying mousetraps right now, but I have a feeling we won't be dealing with any ordinary mouse here. Clearly anything that has been exposed to the amount of evil energy in that Hallowe'en closet (there's a severed head on a pole in there for Chrissakes) for as long as it must have been will have changed...will be...different...somehow. The thing lived in a skull, and drank blood! When it emerges...we will know.

Oh yeah, and our cats will be forfeit.