Look past the green lilac sprouts, between the two woody trunks and into the shadows under the stairs where the metal panels touch the earth. There’s a hole dug in the clay soil and rocks there. Here’s a closer view.
The house occupies a slope and the hole is on the down-slope side where a concrete pier supports stairs leading to a sunroom. Here the distance between the ground and the inside house floor is three feet. The hole itself is about four inches high and six inches wide but instantly expands inside to much larger. It’s probably as high as the distance between ground and floor support beams, and as broad as the entire underside of the house. I’m not willing to thrust my arm in there to explore and then discover someone with teeth and an attitude of solitude.
The new resident came to my attention weeks ago when I heard wild clanking and bashing beneath the floor beginning at sunset. Sounded like a herd of tiny horses, crashingly loud. Since then I’ve heard the same bashing sounds at the opposite end of the house (below my bed). I hear the animal enter at sunset, make a bunch of noise for an hour or so, be quiet most of the night, then more noise before leaving at sunrise.
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My ideas on who this might be are tailored by these criteria: diurnal, digger, hole is big enough but not too big, habituated to human buildings, and occurs in California’s north-western Sierra foothills. Diurnal rules out my repeated skunk visitors, raccoon, and should rule out woodrats and deer mice. Digging rules out feral cats. Locale rules out woodchucks. I told biologist friends of the sounds and timing, asked for their guesses, and weasel (Mustela frenata) was the most common suggestion. Apparently there are lots of weasels here although I’ve not seen one.
Since I crouched under the staircase to photo and measure the hole, I’m reconsidering my hope that a weasel moved in. Weasels eat rodents (like rats and mice) so having a resident weasel seems a decent arrangement. Long-tailed weasels are slender and can enter into the burrows and tunnels of their rodent prey. Thus, a weasel could squeeze through this hole. But, it’s much more likely I’ve a rat or deer mouse wearing combat boots because now I’m hearing chewing. The gnawing wood-ripping sound of a rodent creating a nest. It goes on for 10 minutes post-sunset, then silence. I don’t think weasels do this; never lived with one.
My plan was to buy a bag of gypsum and spread it in the hole’s entry path to capture prints and then identify the animal and be able to discern when he/she is present by the direction of their tracks. The smallest bag of gypsum was 30 pounds, which should be overkill on the print taking need, so I’m using white flour instead. I can block up the hole, but new holes could be dug elsewhere. I don’t want to seal anyone inside to die or chew their way out, so watching the prints can help me ensure I seal it up after the guest has checked out for the day. I’m waiting for a day without rain when I’ll be home at sunset and sunrise so I can inspect the flour for prints before they are messed up by too much action. I’ll report back what I find.
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