woodrat 2

T - last night at 4 in the morning, J and I woke up to a really loud thumping noise of an unidentified nature.  After a few seconds of us both sitting up and clarifying that it was not imaginary and agreeing that it, unfortunately, DID sound as if it came from inside, I grudgingly agreed to get dressed and investigate.  It was, after all, a rather alarmingly loud thumping, and I was convinced I heard some other scratchy noises after it.  I was very much hoping that a certain mr. bear was not trying to stay in our cabin with us, so I started by investigating upstairs locations.  Did anything tip over in the closet?  No, it didn't appear so.  Nothing looked out of place in the bedroom.  Was there anything going on in the spare bedroom?  Hmmm, doesn't look like it.
I was holding an electric lantern, and shining it about for signs of anything, and looked at the weird unfinished space behind the desk in the spare bedroom.  Well, as a matter of fact, it looked as if the little pieces of two by fours I had set up before had fallen down, which explained the very loud thumping noise.  Pieces of lumber falling on open wood floor will make very disturbing noises indeed.  For those of you who don't remember why there were stacked two by fours behind the desk in the unfinished space with the water heater in the spare bedroom, I will refresh your memory!
A couple weeks ago or so, when Jessica and I chased woodrat#2 around and attempted to catch him, the slippery little devil ran up the stairs and into the spare bedroom into the unfinished space.  It's actually only a few feet wide, because it's the area behind where the bathroom wall cuts into the spare bedroom, so I was able to use a big piece of cardboard tucked behind the desk to seal off the space.  Since we wanted to catch the woodrat and not just seal him off, I built a little ramp from stacked two by fours that were sitting in there to give woodrat a way to get out of the space, but since it led up to the desk and then he would have to jump down from the desk to go anywhere, he wouldn't have a way back in to elude our capture attempts. 
SO, ANYWAY, it was this two by four ramp that had fallen down.  I turned on the crawlspace light, and, sitting in the corner, was a very confused woodrat.  he/she just kind of sat there and looked at me, as if to say "I was minding my own business climbing on a nice piece of wood that looked like it led to fun interesting places and then it fell down all of a sudden and I was so confused and then a giant monster came and turned on all the bright lights and I can't see and what on EARTH IS GOING ON?!"
He sat there long enough for me to call J in and admire the little troublemaker, but soon after that he decided that all the staring and pointing and commenting on the cuteness of his furry tail was really too much attention and ran away back into a hidey-hole.  I put a live trap kinda wedged in there so when he comes back it will seem to be a most exciting place to investigate, and we'll see if we have any luck this time.