Micro Monday - October 7, 2024

The Sound in the Attic

Hi folks. I’m back from vacation, which means a return to the usual schedule. This week’s microfiction is based on a true story, but I waited a bit before posting it here because I think it sits better in the middle of spooky season. Enjoy!

The Sound in the Attic

It might be rats, that sound in the attic.

You can tell when a neighborhood has a rat problem. Long rows of mint planted along the fences, concrete slabs buttressed with hard yellow foam, little food bowls on porches like classified ads for stray cats.

None of it works. The rats find a way in; they climb like you wouldn’t believe. They nestle into your insulation, dull their never ending teeth on your wires. They’re just as confused as you are when the fire starts.

Or it might be a squirrel, which isn’t much better.

The thing about squirrels is that they remember. You have to catch them alive and release them so far away that they can’t find their way back. They like their homes, squirrels, and will do anything to keep them.

They’re a lot like us, is what I’m saying.

Whatever it is up there, you have options - but you won’t like any of them. Rat poison kills rats, but it also kills cats and owls. Snap traps break arms and legs more often than necks. Glue traps are pure torture.

A squirrel in a live trap will drown in ten inches of bath water. Allegedly.

In the meantime, the sound in the attic isn’t going away. It gets louder, quieter, louder again. It moves from one room to another.

It might be you or them, when it comes down to it, and we both know it isn’t going to be you.

***

If you’re lucky, the pest control company will call and say they had a cancellation, they can fit you in on Thursday afternoon if that works (it does). The technician will come out and shake your hand, walk around the edge of the house, shine a flashlight under the eaves.

“Bats,” he’ll say (if you’re lucky).

This will be a shock to you. You never even considered bats in the attic. It sounds goofy, like something out of an old movie, but the technician is confident.

“What do we do?” you’ll ask.

“Nothing,” he’ll say. “They go away on their own. Probably two, three weeks, once the pups are old enough to fly.”

And you’ll finally understand what it’s like to be the villager who finds the monster in the wood shed, to see the human face staring back at you, to understand that we’re not so different after all - that we’re all just trying to find a little shelter.

You’ll feel, possibly forever, the abiding sense of relief that comes from letting the monster live.

The misunderstood monster is a common fixture in speculative fiction. The little girl in Frankenstein, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Oskar in Let the Right One In: I think most people feel a kind of kinship with the characters in these stories, who manage to befriend the monster instead of joining the mob to drive them out of town. It speaks to a shared humanity, the idea that there aren’t (or shouldn’t be) insurmountable barriers between people who are just trying to survive.

All of that goes to shit when you think you have a pregnant squirrel in your attic.

It doesn’t matter that she’s a mammal, like you, or that she’s looking for a safe place for her little ones. Despite her good intentions, squirrels cause a surprising number of house fires each year. Her persistence, her resourcefulness, and her devotion to her young (all of which are considered virtues in our own species) make her dangerous, a wild thing that must be driven out.

Which is difficult, at least for me. I don’t like to consider my capacity for cruelty - even necessary cruelty. But I also know that it’s the squirrel or me, and it isn’t going to be me.

Bats, on the other hand, are much easier to deal with. They rarely carry diseases, they don’t chew wires, and they move out as soon as their young are strong enough to make the journey. They’re also illegal to kill here in Colorado, which is somewhat of a blessing. Knowing that I can’t do anything about them closes off that entire range of possibilities. It spares me the pain of having to kill something I understand.

Thanks to the bats in my attic (which are now gone), I can go on pretending that I’m one of the characters who understands the monster. I can leave the pitchfork in the hayloft where it belongs.