One day when DIL was here, we came home from our mani/pedi and she went upstairs to her room and I turned on the electric kettle for a cup of Dong Suh brown rice green tea the captain brought back from Korea.  DIL chose Yogi ginger. I brought her tea upstairs and as I walked past the other bedroom we’ve turned into our office and crafts center, I looked down, and there on the carpet, were what appeared to be several animal prints.

The carpet had been freshly vacuumed and I had not been in that room all day. They really, really looked like an animal had been in there. “S, come here, no, not there, watch where you walk, OMG, I think there is an animal in the house, look down, what does that look like to you?”

She totally thought it looked like an animal print and we followed what we thought were more tracks embedded in the carpet downstairs.

At this point, we were getting freaked out. Being a bit braver than I am, she looked in the laundry room, the closets, and under all the beds. Nothing. Together, we went to the living room to search the fireplace area. Nothing. Checked the entrance to the attic. Nothing.

I called the captain, not thinking or caring that he might be sleeping or working. “THERE’S AN ANIMAL IN THE HOUSE, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO, WE’RE SCARED!”

He is normally a calm person, an important trait in a captain of a vessel, and he tried to logically and patiently figure out what was going on.

“Was the alarm on when you came home”

“Yes.”

“That would mean that the motion sensors would have reacted if something was walking around, right?”

“Well, yeah, but what if it didn’t weigh enough to trigger the sensors?”

“Do you see any kind of mess; trash overturned, furniture ripped up, or sounds of any kind?”

“No…but maybe they are tidy squirrels, raccoons, possums, whatever they are”

“OK, do this. Take some talcum powder and sprinkle it over the tile floors, creating a path all the way to the door. You and S go out for a while and when you come back, if there was an animal in the house, the powder should retain the tracks, kind of the same way the CSI does fingerprints.”

“And then call me back, ‘cos I’m really busy right now”

“OK, but can you come home? Hello? Hello?”

“And what do you mean IF there was an animal, don’t you believe me?”

Of course, he had already hung up and never heard that. I sprinkled the powder. When we came back, there was nothing. Not one single thing. Nothing except a gigantic mess that I had to clean up. I vacuumed and then mopped the floor. The powder had migrated and sifted a bit under the sofa and chairs, so I was a busy bee for quite a while, on top of being exhausted from my full-time job as mom shuttle.

S came to the conclusion that if what we saw was not a living creature, it must be a ghost, perhaps even the ghost of Spirit Squirrel. I’m not sure I’m a believer, but I was too tired and stressed out to think of any rational explanations, so that’s it, the ghost of Spirit Squirrel it was.

Before the clean up.