Scream heard 'round the room

Today has been a busy day. I spent most of the morning putting together some furniture I got yesterday at Ikea: a desk, a rolling drawer unit (for the desk), and a bookshelf. I managed to empty about 4 boxes onto the bookshelves and into the desk drawers. In town almost a month and I'm finally starting to move in.

This afternoon I walked around the mammal wing of the Natural History Museum. It was interesting, and a good reason to be out of the house and wandering around town for a while. I had the company of two of house mates and my friend Brooke. She's in town for the weekend to look at apartments before she starts grad school in the fall--and she managed to find a place she liked in less than 48 hours. Now that's skill.

The real excitement of the last few days though, happened very early on Thursday morning. 1:42 in the morning, to be exact. According to our resident Texan, that is when the tranquil neighborhood was disrupted by a blood-curdling scream; her scream. Apparently she screamed for help, and was totally appalled when she found out that none of her big, burly house mates were willing to come to aid a damsel in distress.

What happened to cause such a neighborhood-waking scream, you might ask? The story is that she woke up feeling something small and furry running across her legs. Then saw it scampering across the floor. But wait. This is where the story becomes exciting. After getting bored running on the bed and the floor, this UFO (unidentified furry object) started running across her mirror. It's a vertical mirror.

Now that you've each got little tingly feelings running up and down your spine, you're probably wondering what's wrong with the three of us who made no move to help our traumatized and victimized friend. It was unanimous. None of us heard the howls for aid.

Hold on. If I didn't hear it, and the other two guys didn't hear it, how did I know it was 1:42 am? Excellent question. Having found no assistance with a scream, our take-no-prisoners Texan called me in an attempt to find help in a more targeted, reach-out-and-touch-someone sort of way. It almost worked. By the time I fumbled to my phone and answered it, there was three seconds of silence before the line went dead.

I thought to myself, "What!? It's 1:42 in the morning, and someone who sleeps down the hall is calling me." In my sleep induced dullardry I could only surmise that it was the cellphone era version of sleep walking.

The next day two of us went over to the hardware store to pick up a trap. It's been set in ambush for the past 2.5 days, just waiting for that UFO to come scurrying by. To this point we have thoroughly unmolested peanut butter and an unsprung ambush.

Until I have evidence to the contrary I'm chalking the whole event down to some strange mushrooms in the pasta on Wednesday night.

**Side note. I've been trying to figure out how to insert line breaks between my paragraphs, or at least indent them, for the past 30 minutes now to no avail. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know.