I got little to no sleep last night. No, I didn’t drink large amounts of caffeine, I don’t have a guilty conscience, and I don’t have back problems either. So why couldn’t I doze off, you ask? I blame it on the squirrel. Yes, the squirrel.

You see, we’re spending the weekend at my lakehouse for the first time this year. Upon arrival it was discovered that the place had been partly overrun by insects, which was a nice find. Also, apparently over the winter there was an infestation of small animals in my bedroom as I found suspicious stains on my pillowcase. Lovely. After a few hours of sweeping we assumed that most of nature’s creatures had been evacuated, which was a pleasant notion, and everyone retired to their beds. My parents fell asleep fast, but I made a rather unfortunate discovery before drifting off to dreamland. A squirrel had taken up residence in my wall… lucky me.

Last night it shuffled around a bit from time to time, but all in all the squirrel didn’t cause much commotion until early this morning. At half past midnight I was awoken by a noise that sounded almost like a deranged 2-year-old, and I thought I was dreaming until I remembered my squirrel friend. He obviously was out to drive me insane. This went on for about a half hour before I finally got sick of it and scouted out a better place to sleep. I was going to spend the night on the living room couch, but Mr. Squirrel’s penetrating cry could still be heard loud and clear even there. I ended up crashing in the sunroom with both glass doors shut and locked.

Frankly I still have no idea what caused my squirrel friend to lose his marbles. Perhaps he was cooped up in my wall for too long and went the way of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, but there’s also the chance that he was simply out to ruin my sleep. It’s probably the latter. On the bright side, we’re going home Saturday, so I shouldn’t have to put up with any more psychotic rodents for a while. Maybe when we come back the little guy will have found his way out of my wall. Well, that or he’ll be dead. Is it really awful that both of those possibilities sounds appealing right now?

Other news.....

Apparently I missed my first earthquake. A 3.8 magnitude earthquake yesterday morning was actually strong enough to wake some people in the Milwaukee area. My sister and her roommate found books and kitchen bowls scattered across the floor after falling from shelves. It appears the quake was centered in Canada on the border between Ontario and Quebec. The quake was felt across a number of states, including Detroit, Toronto, Vermont, and in New York City.

This made me curious to find out if Milwaukee had earthquakes in its history. I was shocked to find it had several! The strongest magnitude quake occurred on 2/28/1925 which registered at 7.0. The location of the actual earthquake was Quebec, Canada. Same as yesterdays quake...interesting.