Despite the roaring fire in the woodstove, Santa found his way down our chimney last night.

He even found the peanut butter to stick in Tucker’s present.

Once the peanut butter was gone, in less than five minutes, I got the new toy dumped on my lap and an invitation to play.

So much for Tucker quietly amusing himself. But at least he understands the holiday lesson of sharing.

Merry Christmas from our little farm family to yours!

in my bathroom. Either it’s the amplified ghost of last night’s dead mouse, or a rat or a squirrel or a giant anaconda, but it’s huge. Two nights of fifty degree temperatures and suddenly my house has turned in to the last outpost in the Arctic.

I was sitting at my desk tonight and kept hearing scrobbling noises above my head in the master bathroom. I thought it was Grita, my cat, after a bug or maybe another mouse, but it just kept going. So I went upstairs and the bathroom door was shut, as it usually is, and Grita ran up the stairs from where she had been all this time in the living room. Knowing that whatever was making those noises wasn’t my cat, my heart sunk and I opened the bathroom door. SOMETHING was behind the curtains that cover the unfinished cubbies under the eaves, which are awaiting some custom-built doors. So “Psycho,” I know!

I steeled myself and removed the curtains. SOMETHING ran from one cubby to the next, through the wall, flopping around on top of the plastic that lines the cubbies. It sounded almost like a bird, flappy and panicked. I was waiting for it to burst out and claw off my face, but it got quiet, and then nothing.

So just what I need. Another, even bigger, unidentified creature in the only space that directly connects to the area of the house in which I am most likely to pad, barefoot and sightless in the night, to drop trou.

I am so over the creatures in the cubby holes.

I set two mouse traps, discovering that either last night’s mouse or this unidentified monster had eaten most of the vinyl off a bath pillow I had stashed in the cubbies. Vinyl for dinner? I mean, really? I am not sure mouse traps are heavy enough artillery for whatever’s in there now, and I totally expect to wake up to a furious raccoon, a snapped mousetrap dangling from its toe, flying at my face when I open the bathroom door. Of course, the racoon will have rabies and will maul me to death in my own home. If I don’t post in the next few days, call an ambulance, no need for the siren.

Nature always wins.

Until I figure this out, I am avoiding the upstairs bathroom during the night. Which probably means I will break my neck navigating the stairs in the dark, but at least I won’t die of rabies.

So at midnight tonight I lay down my magazine and got up to go to the bathroom. I was sitting on the toilet when I saw a mouse poke its head out from behind a basket in the corner of the room. You longtime readers know what that means: mouse rodeo!

Because I am a remarkably more ruthless rodent killer when I haven’t been just awoken from a dead sleep, I quickly scooped up my cat from where she was reclining, pasha-like, on the bed, and bounced her into the bathroom with a command to get to work, while I shut us both inside and stuffed a towel under the door. And then I picked up a foam flip-flop from A.T., a “career” clothing store much beloved by D.C.-area wonkettes.

My dog gets a lot of props on this blog, but tonight the cat got to shine. It took about two seconds for her to hone in on the mouse, and she drove it right into my path. One whack stunned it, but it jumped up and made for the back of the toilet. I changed weapons to a Brazilian beach-ready, much sturdier rubber flip-flop and struck again. The poor mouse quivered a bit and bled out on my floor, but died right next to the disinfecting wipes.

When I picked it up for disposal, I saw that a piece of the netting I use to keep the chickens out of the garden was stuck around its middle, grown into the flesh like a porpoise stuck in a plastic six-pack holder. For some reason that made me sad, and I can not tell you why.