The Battle for Shangri-La

Last night, Dave, Don and I (we're roommates) were watching Chuck on the interwebs using my computer. The door leading up to the finished section of our attic is directly across the landing from my room. We've had a critter in the unfinished portion of the attic and we'll hear him moving around or squeaking, but always through the walls and such. Last night we heard a squeak traveling through the medium of air instead of walls or floors.

So we freak out a bit. We all move towards the stairs, I stop, go to the longsword that I have beside my bookcase. I draw it, and lead the way upstairs. I make a racket, turn on the lights that go up the stairs. We hesitate at the small landing, attic lightswitch just out of reach with my arm and my sword. I hold my postition at the stairs while Don and Dave are grabbing weapons. Don gets his War Club (a metal-studded piece of wood) and declares us ready. I tell him to grab me a shield. He barrels downstairs, grabs three shields and his Falchion (a sword primarily used for chopping that is very sharp) and tosses Dave his club. So Dave is at the foot of the stairs with the War Club and a shield, I'm at the top of the stairs with my sword and a shield. Don is on the landing with me with sword and shield. We move up.

I'll tell the rest of the story after I handle this busy stretch at the bank.

And we're back!

So we move up. Don and I with swords in hand, shields strapped to our arms. We get halfway up the steps and I'm able to reach up and hit the lightswitch. The room is flooded with light and we see...

potential. There are boxes piled up on the left side of me. That side is also closer to the board that is the door between the finished and unfinished portions of the attic. There are less boxes on the right side of the room. There is also a chewed up thing in the middle of the room. Some little curtain hanger. Don watches the left side of the room for movement while I poke around the right side of the room with my sword to see if the little varmit is in there. Nothing.

I sweep to the left side. I put down my shield and begin picking up boxes with my sword at the ready to see if he's hiding behind anything. At one point I'm picking boxes up behind the wall for this closet area that happens to also be three feet from the unfinished attic. I startle and yell, "Oh, CRAP!" and then, "Just kidding!" Dave yells a disapproving "Dude!" from downstairs and Don assures me I almost got impaled in the thigh. They weren't terribly impressed. He's nowhere in the attic.

We find a catch and release trap in up there and we set it up. It's broken, so we're not overly convinced it's going to work, but we decide we'll put it in there anyway. Don readies the trap, I stand with the door blocked, ready to take the board away, gently set the trap in (the trap and door are each about a foot wide) and take out my hand and replace the trap. The trap is set. I pick up the trap, pull the board away, put the trap in there. Immediately, it springs. We can't tell if it sprung because there's a critter in it or it just went off by itself. We rig up a light to see inside the attic and see that it just set itself off. After a couple more tries we finally get it in and set up.

We set the board back up and stack these heavy wood boxes that Don has in the attic up so they are blocking the board. Then I put a bunch of tubs behind those and between the two things they stretch the four feet across the closet.

We plan on allying ourselves with an extermination service to complete our victory. It was an exciting night.