I’m not going mad, there are uninvited guests in my house

There’s a sound coming from beneath our floorboards.

The noise is coming from our walls and roof too, to be fair.

I haven’t committed any murders recently, so I’m confident it’s not my conscience.

Despite the presence of three large dogs and a ferret in our home, I think we have mice, and I’ve been living in denial about the situation for some time.

When we moved in a year ago, an enormous collection of cans and bottles was left behind the house by the previous tenant.

I say enormous – we took it all to the Return and Earn over the course of a week and made a cheeky $372.80.

At 10c return per container that’s 3728 cans and bottles by my count.

As we cleared away the last of the debris, we thought we spotted something small and furry race out of sight.

We didn’t think much of it.

One of our dogs has been known to snatch birds out of the air (to our eternal shame), so we assumed any creatures that took up residence in the backyard would be dispatched swiftly, and with extreme prejudice.

At the height of summer I spotted some tiny droppings in the laundry, but I thought they came from the mammoth roaches that plague the ‘Gong in the warmer months. I bleached the floor, chucked out some baits, and didn’t think about it again.

Surely the ferret would have hunted down any warm-blooded creature that came into his territory.

At this point it sounds as though our house is a delicately balanced ecosystem. Which it is, but for the record I’d like to say it’s a very clean one. It gets the mother AND mother-in-law seal of approval.

Every now and again we’d hear the patter of tiny feet on the roof – birds, of course, I told myself.

Maybe a possum, when the footsteps got a bit heavier.

Things have escalated, however.

Relaxing on the sofa I heard tiny claws scritching at the wall behind me.

I assumed the ferret was demanding dinner, but he was safely locked away in his den, slumbering peacefully. I sat back down, and there it was again.

Too small for dogs. Too low down for birds. Definitely IN the walls.

More experienced householders might think I’ve been living in an extended state of delusion, and maybe they’re right.

In fairness to myself – which is the kind of fairness I’m most interested in – it’s probably genetic.

When we were kids, we had a chook run out the back of our house.

We’d often spot tiny creatures racing for cover when we went to let the chooks out. They’d clearly been gorging themselves on the chicken feed.

As time went on they got more and more confident, and could often be seen sitting near the back door in broad daylight, cleaning their whiskers.

Mum was besotted with them.

“We have a whole colony of bandicoots in the backyard,” she’d gush to anyone who came by, assertively correcting anyone who thought they’d glimpsed a rat in the bushes.

Funnily enough, it turns out that bandicoots are solitary creatures. They don’t really “do” colonies.

What do “do” colonies are rats.

Poor Mum was horrified when she learnt we’d been nurturing and protecting a healthy, thriving rat colony at the back door.

I’m not sure what happened to them in the end, although they did disappear.

Given our current situation it’s probably time to ask Mum for the answer to that particular childhood mystery – or add a cat to the ecosystem.