Kids have the wildest imaginations, don’t they? That is one of the joys of raising them, is that I get to experience these unique and original thoughts.
As people get older, they start to do and say the things they are supposed to. Society teaches us what are the correct beliefs to hold, and most people “go along to get along.” With young kids you get raw unfiltered ideas, things you might have never heard before! The other night my 4-year-old Elle told me that she heard ghosts in the ceiling and she was scared to sleep by herself. I laid down with her, and an hour later I heard the strange sounds she described! It wasn’t a ghost, though, it was an animal crawling through the ductwork. This has happened to me before, and I know how much of a hassle it is to get a living creature out of the small confines of an air duct ventilation system. The first thing I did was close off all the air vents, to keep it from wriggling into the house. I looked around outside the house until I saw the exterior air duct shaft that had a broken corner. It was only a few inches wide, but this gap was an open door into the ductwork, and I was lucky if there weren’t a lot more animals in there! I put some food outside that broken gap in the ductwork, hoping the animal would leave my house to eat. No such luck! Now I have to call animal control and an HVAC contractor.