Like all old New England houses, the center of the house is a post and beam construction on a dry/minimal mortar field-stone foundation.  The southern section is even less airtight, as it rests on stone piers and has no foundation.  It also isn’t actually connected in any structural way to the rest of the house.  Consequently, Esperanza houses quite a few more inhabitants than the homo sapiens and felix domesticus.  All of the small furry kind.  The walls can be quite noisy at night.  However, the cats catch those that get above the basement, the electrics are all metal sheathed, and they don’t chew through plaster, so it falls under the incurable, endurable category.   Though the red squirrels have gotten to be a bit much, seeing as two of them were arguing with such vigour over the seed packets (that had been left vulnerable for about an hour) in the basement that they didn’t pay attention to the appearance of a person.  They also fight, roll acorns around in the ceiling, and are generally loud. They may, like the over-population of chipmunks last year, be reduced in number.

All of which is why, when the phones went out a few days ago we naturally assumed that it was probably a problem in the house, and probably a problem caused by a rodent.  The electrical lines may be sheathed in metal, the phone and cable lines are not.  It was rather nice to discover that while the problem was caused by a rodent…it wasn’t one of ours.  Rather, it was a nest in the switch box, several miles away, and one of the lines that was actually chewed through was ours.  Fun and games.