I wake up to crunching sounds. Turn the light on. Nothing. Start going back to sleep. Crunching again. Getting annoyed. Turn light on. Wait. Track crunching sound to bookshelf two feet from bed. Look closely. Discover two beady litle eyes staring back at me from under a magazine. Grunt grumble and swear. Get dressed, Get shoes, Go get mousetrap. Bait leave on shelf. So much for sleep now, I am waiting for the snap.

Okay, it's now 4:07 am and the suspense is killing me. Did ya get it?

Nope, apparently one look at my ugly mug and he left for the night. I will set a couple more traps in there today.

When we lived in Portland, we had roof rats get into the house. They started in the crawl space and when we renovated the kitchen leaving multiple holes for a few weeks we ended up with them in the house. The gnawing as you described was loud enough to wake you. Had destroyed the entire house all at once rather than room by room renovation, and so we had a mattress on the floor of what was the dining room next to the kitchen.

In the middle of the gnawing I heard something slip between my pillow and the wall and a few seconds later with both dogs eagerly taking part, had a roof rat in the beam of the mag light and that was the end of that one.

That was actually my first "exclusion" need I ever had, didn't want a repeat of that event.

Since you said "we," could you get your lovely bride to rewrite this story in her own words? ( From personal enperience, I'm guessing her's would be way more exciting )

Actually she is way more calm in every way in any wildlife situation.

When we lived in MI had bats in our cabin we rented, I was the one who when she woke me and the bat made a fly by, jumped out of bed frantic!

One of her pet peeves just happened again the other day.

Lady of the house as we are inspecting bat colony in entry says.

"You aren't afraid to go with him or be near wildlife like bats."

Happened years ago at NTA, she was looking to try live snares for our coyote project, none of the vendors (all men)
would make eye contact with her and addressed only me.

She bought nothing till we met FNT.

We know her pain. My daughter has probably done more skunk jobs than anyone but me. The customers had a hard time with this. ( Well not all of them. One old guy practically cried when I showed up instead of Stacy )

My wife helps me at the tables at the conventions. She has the same problem with most men when they come to the table. They always ask for me, even though she knows more about the business than I do.

I work retail. Something that is funny is that I have seen Women do that.

ADC, that is not only true but not very funny. My wife and daughter are every bit as good or better than I am. And yet I can't help but wonder how many jobs we've lost to women who wanted to hear a man's voice on the subject.

Oh ya, Ive had people leave when I told them to ask a woman in the next department. They want me to help and I dont know anything about the subject. Flooring or what not.