Things that go bump in the night . . .

**I copied this from an email I sent to my sister-in-law today--I'm too lazy to type it all out any differently tonight! But I wanted to post it before I forgot. I'm sure some of you will get a laugh out of our interesting adventure! :)**

I've got to tell you about our adventure last night. Actually, at about 4:30 am! I woke up to a strange, furtive rustling noise. At first I thought it was one of the kids getting up to use the bathroom. That happens occasionally, and they usually sneak into our room and wake us up by standing by the bed and whispering, or touching one of us quietly (scares me to death when they do that!). Anyway, I looked around in the dim light and couldn't see anything, and didn't hear any more noise, so I relaxed and figured it was just the house creaking, or the wind or something. After a few minutes, I heard another rustling noise. Well, there is some loose Tyvek on the outside wall of our bedroom, and it can sound like that when the wind blows. So I decided that's what it must be. A few minutes later, I heard a different noise--this time it sounded like something was scrabbling around on one of the window screens. I hoped against hope that it was on the OUTSIDE of the window, not the inside. Because it sounded rather big--bigger than a moth or a Junebug or anything like that. By this time I was definitely awake and on the alert, staring at our windows. We have three large windows across the front wall of the bedroom, and above them, a smaller window that's mostly for ventilation. As I watched, I saw a dark silhouette running around the rim of that small window--a squirrel shaped silhouette!!! AAACK! I immediately woke Jim: "JIM! There's a SQUIRREL in here!" He jumped out of bed, a bit disoriented, and ran for a gun. I grabbed Josiah, who had ended up in bed with us sometime during the night, and dove out of our room into the living room. In the meantime I'd seen the squirrel drop to the floor, out of the corner of my eye. Yep, it wasn't just a squirrel, but a FLYING squirrel! Lovely. Thankfully, Jim was able to shoot it with birdshot, in the little .22 "Crickett" rifle that he bought recently. It made hardly any noise and he got it on the first try. The other two kids never woke up at all, and Josiah went right back to sleep once we got back in bed. It took Jim and me a little while to get back to sleep, though!! And further convinced us of the need to finish the house . . . :)