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Groundhog Days

It starts from across the room and then moves toward me. It’s the sound of...something. I don’t know what it is, but I do know it’s coming in my direction, and I don’t like that. It’s in the ceiling, skittering across the pressboard tiles, which look so vulnerable and fragile right now. Is it heavy enough to knock one loose and land on my head? I don’t know.

I’m at work and there’s something running around above us all. No one knows what it is because no one can see it. We can only hear it. It sounds big.

I never expected, when I woke up this morning, to be dealing with something like this. Winter can feel like one long Groundhog Day, like in the movie of the same name. You wake up, fumbling in the dark until it’s time to go to work. You work until it’s time to go home and then fumble in the dark again as you enter your murky abode. Like the thing in the ceiling, your one motivation is to find warmth. Anywhere.

And so, here I am on a wearisome winter workday, wondering what’s above, crashing toward me. At least it’s something different happening during the day. That’s the positive side. Winter doldrums always hit me hard. The negative side is that I can’t see it, so I don’t know exactly what it is. Or how large.

I think of another movie with Bill Murray in it, Ghostbusters. There’s a scene in which a ghost comes at him from afar and then slimes him. Am I about to get slimed? Or maybe I’m Ripley in Alien about to encounter a strange being on the hunt.

The ghost/alien is halfway across the room and still coming my way. Then it’s directly above me. There are clawing sounds as if it’s going to tear through the tiles. I bolt up and my chair slides on its rollers and bumps into the wall.

I jump aside yelling, “It’s right above me!”

And then it’s gone. It ricochets from my area to another area in the office.

“It’s above me now!” someone cries out.

Now that person is Bill Murray or Sigourney Weaver in a movie that they never wanted to be in. Happy Wednesday!

Now that the ghost/alien is somewhere else in the office, I sit back down and call the landlord. She tells me she’ll phone someone to deal with the issue and call me back. By the time she does, the critter has made the rounds of the office so many times we’re all wondering if there aren’t multiple beings up there.

“Well, they can’t come until next week. Most of their staff is out with the virus. Call me back if the problem gets really bad,” the landlord tells me.

“Uh, well...I don’t think I need to call you back. I can tell you right now that it’s really bad. People are freaking out and whatever this is sounds big. Or there’s more than one of them.”

“More than one?”

“Yeah, it’s like...everywhere. Ack! Now it’s back at my desk!”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

It does seem like there has to be more than one. It’s over my desk and then in an instant it’s over someone else’s desk way across the room.

The Bossman goes home and grabs a Hav-a-Hart trap that he owns. He baits it with peanut butter, slides a tile over, and places the trap inside the ceiling. Then we all wait.

Before long there’s a noise at the trap. Then there’s a face peeking over the edge of the open gap.

Who knew birds liked peanut butter?

After consuming the bait but not getting trapped, the bird flies through the space in the ceiling, startling the Bossman and the other person who is also in his office. Needless to say, that’s the end of their meeting.

There’s a happy ending, though. A recycling bin and a folder to cover up the opening makes for a nice trap and soon the bird is caught and released to the outdoors where it belongs.

We’re in the seemingly endless Groundhog Days of winter. That is, until a small but very loud creature takes winter under its wing.

Juliana Gribbins is a writer who believes that absurdity is the spice of life. Her book Date Expectations is winner of the 2017 Independent Press Awards, Humor Category and winner of the 2016 IPPY silver medal for humor. Write to her at jeepgribbs@hotmail.com. Read more of her columns at www.zip06.com/shorelineliving.