2004 The Monroe House

When my internship in Texas ended, I moved back to Colorado and moved into a house with Mrs. S, her sister AG and another girl they knew. The house on Monroe Street was a hilarious roommate experience. We were all so different but had so much fun. The fourth roomie was an interesting bird, sweet as can be, but prone to messiness. There were many mornings when I would walk into our kitchen and hear the crunch of cereal that she had spilled beneath my feet. Living with Mrs. S and her sister made for a lot of nights laughing into the late hours.

One of the funniest memories of the Monroe House happened one random night in the fall. I had gone to bed and was just starting to drift off when I could hear what sounded like Mrs. S walking up and down the stairs. Up and down. Up and down. I was just about to get up when she knocked and stuck her head in the door. "Can you hear that?" she asked. "Um yeah. What are you doing out there?" Then strangely I heard the same thumping noise again as she was standing there. She looked up and then said, "I think there's an animal in our crawl space." We listened for a few more minutes, and sure enough we could hear something scratching around above our heads.

There was an entrance to the crawl space in the hall ceiling but we decided that the animal sounded too big for any investigating on our parts. Mrs. S believed it to be a raccoon and said she was not about to go up there because "raccoons have claws and they'll go for your eyes." It might be one of the funniest things she's ever said in the entire time I've known her. So what do two single girls do when they think a raccoon is in the crawl space? They call the police. The dispatcher didn't think animal control was open but said she would send someone over to help us. So we sat in our living room and waited, all the while listening to Rocky Raccoon crawl around above the ceiling, convinced that he would come out to say hello at any minute.

A police car arrived and the officer knocked on the door. "I hear you girls are having some sort of animal problem." We explained the noises and directed him to the entrance to the crawl space. We told him that we believed it to be a raccoon. He looked at us and said completely seriously, "Raccoons have claws. I better let animal control deal with this," and put away his flashlight. Really. He wouldn't go up to the attic and I don't blame him. He gave us a number to call the next day and left us alone with our nighttime visitor. Thanks for the help, Officer.

The next morning we went outside and could see that something had made a huge hole in the vent leading to the attic space. Animal control came out but Rocky had already vacated the premises after successfully keeping us up almost all night. To this day, anything involving a raccoon reminds me of that night and how hard we laughed about it after the policeman left. Good times at the Monroe House.