The Boogeyman lives in my dryer

I had about a million things to do this afternoon. I was to pick up Luke from school, immediately take Hank to the vet, and from there drive to my parents house in Flower Mound to celebrate my dads birthday. That means I had to pack Luke's bag (complete with all three ingredients for his diaper rash concoction and pj's), pack the food I was contributing to dinner, bring the gifts, my bag, snacks for me & Luke, money for our Sonic drinks, money for the vet, Hank's leash and crate. . . . whew!

I was gathering these things together and placing them all on top of the washing machine so that they would be easy to load into the car when I was ready to leave. I kept hearing these noises on the baby monitor (by the way, Luke was at school so there should be NO noises on the baby monitor). It sounded like just random banging and scratching and such. I thought "What on earth is Alice doing? I don't usually hear her on the baby monitor." (Alice is our kitty. Due to past incidences, she spends much of her day in the office with the door shut. It's her little kitty haven.) The hallway is the shape of a capital L. Lukes room is at the top of the L, the laundry room is at the corner, and the office is at the far end of the L. I didn't really think much more about it. There is a factory not far from our house and the baby monitor picks up random sounds during the day, the monitor gets static when cell phone signals cross through. Miscellaneous sounds are not uncommon. However, on one trip to the laundry room to put stuff on the washer I was startled to discover the source of the random sounds was not the factory nor Alice. The scratching and scuffling and banging or whatever was coming from the laundry room. More specifically either in the dryer or behind the dryer. I PANICED!!!

I shut the laundry room door as fast as I could. My heart was racing. I hate rodents. I hate rats and possums and mice. I was certain that there was a possum in my dryer. Don't ask me how it got there, but that's what I decided was there. I should be thankful it was in the dryer and not out on the floor staring at me. This morning Hank had been acting funny in front of the dryer. I thought his ball had rolled behind it, but it wasn't there and we were too busy to pay any attention. Anyway, I had ten minutes before I needed to leave to go pick up Luke and here I was frozen in place worried that there was a possum in my dryer. To make matters worse, my car was not loaded, half of the things I needed were locked in the laundry room with the unknown rodent, my keys were there too. Most importantly, I had no way to get to the car as it was in the garage with the door opener. The only route to the garage is through the laundry room.

After calling Gene, I decided I had to just be a big girl and hightail it through the laundry room to the garage, back out the car, and load everything through the front door. I stood in front of the laundry room door mustering up all the courage I had to open it. I banged loud on the door hoping to scare whatever it was into hiding. Next, I cracked the door and peeked in looking up, down, and all around for the possum. I banged really loud on the washer to give it another good scare. I grabbed my stuff off the washer and shut the door. After piling up all the stuff next to the front door I now had to go through. I took some deep breaths and then ran as fast as I could through the laundry room. I am not going to claim that it was a graceful, nor ladylike trip through the laundry room, but I somehow made it through. I loaded the car with all our stuff and Hank and we headed out to pick up Luke.

Meanwhile, Gene was on his way to the house to meet the representative from the humane society to catch my possum/rat/mouse/raccoon/moose. However, he got home to find nothing. No evidence of a visitor, no noises, nothing. Either my loud noises scared it to death, it escaped out the way it came in, or it is somewhere else in my house. I have yet to know. Gene freed Alice so that maybe she could do some hunting while we were out for the evening. Neither Alice nor Hank have found anything. Must be a leftover boogeyman from Halloween.

It's not a post without some pictures! Unfortunately I couldn't get a shot of bigfoot in my dryer. But I got some shots of Luke yesterday. He just figured out how to get into his swing by himself and make it swing.