Mysterious Visitor

      This winter I spent over a week sprucing up the basement.
One side of it had long ago been semi-finished, with a living area and bedroom/bath off of that. It’s terrific when the grand family comes for a visit. However, like so many other basements of its time, the walls are all dark paneling – probably way cool in the late 60s, when I suspect the work was done.

          So after years of grousing about how dark it is, I FINALLY painted it. And then, as anyone who’s ever done a home project knows, one thing led to another. New curtains.  A new daybed. A cover for the daybed. Pillows for the daybed.

          This room was also the path for our guys who were creating my new laundry area, and I imagine the back door was propped on more than one occasion. Remember this fact.

          The other day I went down there poking around for some reason, and moved the pillows. I found tucked under one of them a scattering of seeds with an acorn as the centerpiece.

 Now we’ve had our share of mice in the basement, but after a fall of throwing mothballs with abandon around the foundation of the house, I persuaded myself that I had nipped that in the bud.

          Plus, unless the mouse recruited 10 to 12 of his best friends to stand on each other’s furry shoulders, I can’t see how he could have heaved an acorn two feet up to the top of the daybed.

          Chipmunk? Squirrel? Which would you prefer to have roaming your basement?

          There have been no sightings or signs, so I’m telling myself that my whiskered friend came in, made a deposit for future reference, and zipped back out again.

          That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

But wait, there’s more.                         

     When I went downstairs to take a photo 

of the couch, guess what I found nearby on the rug?