What do you find in a crawl space?

I know old houses have a life of their own, but things around here got really crazy all of a sudden.

Case 1: The first day of classes
I got home around 830 pm from class as I teach a professional writing night class at Allen. Overall, it had been a good day - long and tiring, but good. I get home, change into comfy clothes, and plop down on the couch. All is well for about 15 minutes until I saw something out of the corner of my eye swoop above me. You guessed it: a bat. Dang, I hate those things!! I mean I REALLY hate those things. How did it get in? My guess is that it was nearby and came in with me when I got home. Naturally, I screamed at Ken to get it while I cowered on the couch under a very heavy blanket - because I'm sure all it had on its mind was dive bombing me. With care and patience, Ken opens the back door and lets it fly out. I'm traumatized and spend the rest of the week looking above me in the house for anything moving or perching upside down.

Case 2: The little mouse
During week two of classes, I came home late from class and once again plopped down on the couch for a few minutes of TV time until I headed up to bed. Ken was on the other couch and we were enjoying some showI can't remember what, on television. I heard a noise and figured one of the cats had a squeaky toy out. Something told me to take a look though and when I did, I saw not a squeaky toy but a live mouse in our family room. All four cats were checking it out and Tucker was wildly going after it. He eventually caught it but would not give it up. In fact, he took the thing - it's head in his mouth - and proceeded to run around the house. We managed to corner him in the office where I held him down until he dropped the thing and Ken threw a box on it. Tucker was not happy that we'd taken his kill ( though he hadn't actually killed it). We released it into the wilds of the neighborhood. However, I was yet again freaked out and unable to live in my house comfortably. I just couldn't stand the thought of another mouse making its way into the house and into the family room. I resolved to do something and so called the exterminator the next day, scheduling an appointment for Saturday morning.

Case 3: Something in the sink
Fast forward to Saturday morning. Ken and I are in the basement cleaning up a bit for the exterminator's visit. I'm in the process of cleaning the litter boxes and sweeping the floor. I move one of the litter mats to the laundry room sink so I can wipe it down. I leave it there and proceed to finish my cleaning. I go back to the sink, move the rolled up mat, and see something scurry around the corner of the deep utility sink. I scream, "ANOTHER MOUSE!" and made Ken get rid of it. In some small way seeing this second mouse in such a short time was gratifying because Ken didn't think we needed to call an exterminator -- that I was being a little crazy and obsessed. I guess we showed him. That really did it for me though and I was ready to move. Let the stinking mice have the place. The exterminator came, walked around the house, and found two places where we could do a little something to tighten up possible entry points from the outside which I insisted Ken take care of immediately. After that I put out some bait boxes.

Since this, I haven't seen any more mice or bats and I'm happy to report that something was nibbling on the poison in the crawl space in the basement. Not only that, but I did find two dead mice in there this weekend. Hopefully, they were already there from before closing up the spaces and are now on their way to becoming extinct. I don't like to think of killing animals, but I don't like to think of them alive in my house either. I'm hopeful we are on the road to the end.

That said, lately I've been seeing things out of the corner of my eyes throughout the house. Thankfully nothing is there, but I'm starting to think the house may be haunted and I'm now seeing spirit entities. My next post will probably be about our calling a ghost hunter/medium in to check out that little problem or will be about Ken having me committed to MHI. Either way, it promises to be an interesting post.