When Nature Attacks

I am at two with nature. I did my fair share of camping with my family in my younger days, before I married someone who shares my definition of "roughing it" as not having an in-room coffee maker. "Rugged" is having to walk across the parking lot to a restaurant. Not that I don't appreciate having seen temperate rain forest, Hell's Canyon, the Grand Tetons, or Yellowstone, but nature is full of bugs and dirt and things that want to eat you. Now that I am grown, I have made a deal with nature: I'd stay out of nature if it stayed out of my house. This pact has worked well so far. I don't go camping or hiking or do any other activities that would require me to invade the outdoors. In return, nature doesn't come into my house. However, my deal seems to have one minor flaw: I forgot to include my office in the forbidden zone. I was on the phone with a prospective student this evening when the acoustic tiles above my head started to make a sound that could best be described as "scurrying." Several things belong in the space above a ceiling: air ducts, electrical wires, fluorescent light bulbs, the phone lines, and insulation, for instance. You will note that there is nothing rodential, mammalian, avian, or alive in any way on that list. I'm not sure just what has taken up residence in my office ceiling, but whatever it is scurries, in spite of the fact that nothing that belongs in my ceiling should be animate, much less scurry-capable.

I'd tell nature that the deal is off, but that would require me to coat myself in sunscreen and insect repellent. Nothing is worth smelling like DEET.