Birds!!!! Every spring a large male Piliated Woodpecker likes to attract his girlfriends by tapping on the metal chimney pipe of our living room fireplace for hours on end. He likes to do this at daybreak. The problem with this, aside from being ridiculously early, is the fact that the sound reverberates down the pipe and into the living room..... turning our peaceful country home into a construction site where jack hammers abound. Talk about waking up irritable.... we go from deep REM sleep to rage in a split second. Is it wrong of me to want to strangle this beautiful bird?!?

We found out after we offered on our house that two murders had occurred on the property, after much back and forth we decided you would not find a 100 year old house that did not come with some sort of story. We moved in and my husband was working in the garage when the door started going up and down on its own...needless to say we were a little freaked out and he unplugged the door opener. Fast forward many months of opening the door manually later, my husband figured out we had a bare wire problem and each time a breeze blew in the garage the wires touched and activated the door. No we don't believe in ghosts but we do believe in good wiring jobs!

I had just been in a new home for a month. It was Christmas Eve , my family and I were eating dinner when the fire alarm in one of the bedrooms went off screaming, Evacatuate! Evacatuate! It was only a month old but decided to give us a test. My grandchildren will always remember this Christmas. Thank heaven it was only a test.

For a while, our TV satellite receiver and one of our gas fireplaces would turn themselves on during the day, night, whenever. After much discussion with the fireplace company, we finally decided it was because we live fairly close to an Army base (as the crow flies), and helicopters occasionally fly over our home during training missions, and apparently these helicopters are loaded with electronic equipment which might have triggered a connection to the remotes for both the satellite receiver and the fireplace. It's the only explanation we could come up with, as crazy as it sounds. We did have to replace the transmitter for the fireplace remote as that fireplace recently started turning itself on again. Weird.

The cat stories remind me of when we lived in a very old funky house on a large lot with a drainage ditch in the back. I didn't think much of it till one day I heard the cat meowing and commented to my son about wondering what she wanted. I opened the screen door [it was the dead of summer] to let her in, and there she was with a snake in her mouth!! I screamed, locked the screen door and left her out for the day.

A few years later when we were living in our new home in a new subdivision a couple of blocks from some mountains, our neighbor came over to tell us that they had a baby rattlesnake try to get in their house. It was attracted by the sprinklers as we were having a severe drought. While the snake is making it's way to the house, all neighor kids including my son were out playing in the sprinklers that attracted the snake!! Scared me out of my wits!!

Another thing that happened to me years after the previous stories was that my current husband and I had been in our current house about 2 years when a drunk driver crashed into our neighbors fence and ended up in our yard. It was the middle of the night, my husband was out of town at some training and the dogs started going absolutely crazy. In the midst of this the phone rang, and my neighbor said 'Hayley, do you realize there's a car in your back yard?' I went out there to find the driver in need of something so I gave him whatever. A few minutes later a state police officer came over and told me to go wash with bleach as he had AIDS! So much for wanting to help.......

The neighbors claimed the insurance settlement for the fence that we both owned as their own so we had lots of hassles getting it rebuilt without footing the bill ourselves.

The house we have lived in for the past 14 years has almost as much wildlife living around it as when I lived in the country even though it is smack dab in the middle of town. We have opossums under th garden shed that come out at night to play on my barbecue. Twice we have awoken to a bat in our living room. And let me tell you the tribe of squirrels around here are a hoot! They use the roof as a highway, found a way at one point in my attic and constructed their own condo, they waltz right up to the back door to say hello to my dog and 2 cats, but the funniest one of all was one afternoon when the 2 cats were playing chase through the house. I sat on the couch and watched them run past 1 cat, 2 cats, squirrel? Yep we had a squirrel in the house. After chasing him for about 15 minutes we finally just opened the front door and after a couple of minutes he left on his own accord. Wonder who our next visitor will be?

A hawk flew through the screens on the attached porch. It spent hours perched on the arm of the glider and watched me very closely when I would make my way through the foyer. It had no easy way of getting out and made me very nervous. Eventually I got up enough nerve to prop open the screen door from the outside and it left within the hour. That screen door is often locked. Glad is wasn't that day.

My childhood home was stuck by lightening twice. The last time it blew a hole out the side of the attic.

My neighborhood lies between a major road & a rails-to-trails area, with my house bordering the trail. I've had lots of unique things happen here, such as:

Two turkeys fighting with their necks entwined, while repeatedly circling my house; a wayward bullet on the second day of deer season, which came thru my son's bedroom window after arcing over the whole plan (neighbors tell me my house has been struck before); a bear; blue herons; I almost hit a flying turkey with my truck while coming down the street (I always thought the saying "do turkey's fly?" was just a saying); an F-1 tornado took part of my tree which ended up destroying my shed; and an escapee from a troubled youth home, who showed up at my back door, asked to use the phone and then proceeded to tell me all his escape details while my toddler clung to my leg.

I grew up a few houses up the street and nothing ever happened there. Nor do my neighbors share my experiences. Somehow, I'm always the lucky one.

My brother's house was hit by lightning. The voltage traveled into the house via the phone wire and melted the phone (cord-type) that he had just been talking on!

We had a beautiful cardinal who would fly into our bedroom sliding glass door repeatedly all day long for over 2 years. Every morning he would start around 5 am and continued all day.
We would fly from the railing on the balcony into the glass and flutter about for a minute or so and then go back to the railing for a few seconds and repeat-over and over and over again doink doink doink and once in a while if he wanted a change of scenery, I suppose, he might take a trip down to the slider in the family room for a few doinks then back up to the bedroom.

I started doing some research to find out the life expectancy of a cardinal. Never did find the answer. Eventually he stopped which was a good thing for him as my husband was ready with the shot gun!!

We rarely use the front door, we just go in the house through the garage. One spring I had put up a new wreath on the door, a grapevine wreath with artificial flowers I think. A few weeks later, I heard a bird fly into the front door a few times, and some rustling. I opened the door, and found a birds nest built on my front door wreath! Unfortunately, I must have scared the bird away because it never came back. The nest wasn't completed, so there weren't any eggs or babies abandoned.

lake1114: I'm a little shocked and appalled. You start off by telling us about this "beautiful" creature and then admit watching it slam itself into a sliding glass door, every single day, all day long, for TWO years. And you did nothing but watch. Did it ever cross your mind to put up a drop screen in front of the door? Or maybe simply putting a temporary frosted glass-style film across the glass so the poor thing wouldn't see it's own reflection and think it was another bird to visit? I didn't think a person could last that long without at least wanting to help. Wow....

Dearest shadow you can put your shock to rest. I never said he "slammed himself into the window" nor did I say we never tried anything to help him. We were awakened every morning at 5 am and went to sleep every night listening to him of course we tried. We tried everything from closing the blinds, to keeping lights on, to putting up a mirror, to putting up a cardinal sun catcher, to putting up bird feeders, to consulting experts and to opening the door to let him in. I figured if he wanted in that badly, I would welcome him and don't you forget we did NOT shoot him either!! None of which helped!! He would do this during the daylight as well as at night and thus it was concluded by a bird expert that it was not his reflection. Contrary to popular belief, birds do not always fly into glass because they think it is another bird. Also, I did say that he fluttered about on the window and again I never said he "slammed" into the window. So, get your panties out of a bunch, I am sure if he was hurting himself he would have stopped don't you think?? Would you "slam your head into a door every day for TWO years" if it hurt you?? Assumption is never a good thing Wow...

Not my house but my uncle's farmhouse in the Midwest: One stormy day, lightning struck the windmill on the hill behind the house. A ball of lightning rolled down the hill, and bounced through the open kitchen window over the sink where my aunt was washing dishes. It went down the drain, burning itself through the trap (pipe), and blasted out the cupboard doors to roll across the kitchen, through the dining room, and out the front screen door, finally dissipating in the farm yard drive! Glad I wasn't there to see it, but I did see the scarred sink later!

A cow perd in our window, then I had police running after it.

As a child my family of 6 lived on a large orchard and my parents placed a double-wide mobile home on the land as temporary housing which was supposed to be replaced. It was consequently never laid on a concrete pad or anything. Of course we ended up living in the home all growing up. As the weather changed the ground below the home would shift and so would the home. Doors wouldn't shut or would become hard to open. We had a large clan of rats living under our home and we would often hear them fighting over the poison at night. We would also have the smaller mice crawl up into the home somehow and would run around at night or in broad day light. To say the least, once we left the home none of us ever wanted to live in a mobile home ever for any reason ever, no matter how cheap. Thankfully we have all worked hard to be able to afford things much nicer.

My sons were 11 and 8 when we left them alone at home to go to work bingo night for competitive swimming club of my older son.
We were still driving there when the cell phone rang – my son was screaming “parents, come home immediately, it was an explosion and second floor fall down on the first floor”. I freaked out, but my husband cold blooded commanded him to man up, go inside and check what actually happened.
The true story came out to be less damaging – while kids were watching tv on the first floor, the wall unit space saver cabinet on the second floor fall from the wall on the toilet, falling apart and breaking all glass bottles and cosmetics and making a loud noise. Kid just was so scared!

We had a hot air balloon almost land on our house! My girls are watching it being deflated and packed up.

Our house has been hit by lightening....three times.

We live in Ohio and yet in 2008 Hurricane Ike swept into our part of the world. It caused significant damage including bringing down an 85 ft. Hickory tree onto our house. Mercifully, it took out several smaller trees on its way down, lessening the impact on our home. It required a crane to remove (which cracked our driveway) but we had several years of some really nice firewood.

In the very northeast corner of Iowa, the house I grew up in was surrounded by an enormous yard right in the center of nearly 400 acres of timber covered hillsides, pastures spotted with apple trees, several established ponds and small fields of corn and alfalfa. Needles to say, there was an abundance of wildlife meandering through our yard, some feeding on the multitude of flowerbeds my mom would spend countless hours maintaining, others enjoyed the vegetable garden my dad would proudly drag every visitor to the property through. Some animals visited so regularly we would give them names if there was a distinctive marking or trait that stood out. Some critters were less welcome than others, rattlesnakes were at the bottom of the list, I can recall at least seven times I ran to the house to let mom know I had found another "rattler" in the yard. she would drop what she was doing and grab her garden hoe on the way out the door as we ran to the area I last seen the snake. One time though, the hoe would not suffice. I had heard a bird of sorts carrying on in a huge old elm just down the hill from the house a ways and I did not recognize what kind of bird it was, so being the nature nut I was, I decided to investigate. About 15 feet up inside the dense canopy of leaves there was a downy woodpecker throwing an absolute fit about something and I had to know what it was! I managed to grab onto the lowest limb and hoist myself up to the next limb, which gave me access to a good vantage point right in the crotch of the tree where it split into three main trunks. Just as I got a good visual on the downy again, about eight more feet up from where I stood, something shot from a crotch of the trunk I was leaning against, ripped the noisy little bird from its branch and hurled down at me. It had surprised me so much I lost my balance and nearly fell out of the tree. As it was, I had to jump to the ground rather than climb down because wrapped around the branch that provided access to my perch was a timber rattlesnake, just over four feet long, with the now silent downy in it's mouth. I don't even remember debating what to do, I picked the opposite side of the tree and dropped to the ground. I hit the ground running, straight to mom! Out of breath, all I could get out was "rattlesnake... tree..." She tried to calm me down and get me to catch my breath, all the while telling me that rattlesnakes don't climb trees. She did however think a snake wrapped around a branch with a freshly caught bird in it's mouth would make a nice picture to add to the collage of pictures of the farm on our entry wall. As she grabbed her camera on the way out the door I grabbed her .22 rifle. She asked what I was going to do with it and I told her the hoe wasn't going to cut it this time if it was indeed a rattlesnake. (There was a $2.00 bounty on them, paid at the county courthouse, due to their "overpopulation" back then) As we approached the snake, mom with camera in one hand, the end of the branch in the other we made our way into the shade for our eyes to adjust from the bright sun. Mom was able to use up nearly an entire 24 exposure roll of film before she calmly set the camera down and said "I don't know how it got up there, but I know how it is coming down, put a shell in the gun and stand behind me". One of those pictures made the front page of our local newspaper that month. Funny thing is, this isn't even the story I intended on telling here...

Sitting on floor of aunt's house (doublewide trailer circa mid 70's almost brand new) tending a toddler cousin, in the kitchen. Lightning bolt hit the half dead boxelder less than 30 ft from where I was sitting, and the bolt I swear was about a yard wide... the near side of the place lifted about 6" and rocked, then that side dropped and the other side rose about 3" and dropped. Why that window didn't blow out I don't know. I just happened to be looking out the window at the second the strike happened. Yes it took all the power out; and I had a screaming two year old glued on me peeing himself .... I got to explain to everyone what really happened and cousin and I both had to get a bath and shower over it.

Farmsitting for friends, they are in flatville. They have a nice stand of trees near the house but there is nothing... and I am watering planters, all the dogs out for exercise all of a sudden show up and glue onto me, and big branches start coming off the elm canopy and crashing... I abandon watering and take dogs with me into one of the nearby outbuildings to shelter for a bit. Just outside that building about 30 seconds later, a bolt takes out a small cottonwood they'd just planted, totally exploded the tree from about 6' off ground up... (small, caliper 4-5") They call me because neighbor calls THEM having seen the stroke/flash at their place. I'm okay, dogs are okay, that cottonwood bought it I think. I took their camera to take pictures then cleaned it up the next day. It looked like the stroke flashed into the top of the tree then left the trunk and flashed over to a metal post several inches away.

Where we live now II: our street is technically a county road and a bit out of town there are two curves in the highway. Some semi's in bad weather would take the 'you have to know where it is' turnoff just before the first curve and come down the county road. If it's icy and icky sometimes they skate their rig into someone's yard, and about five years ago, someone did, into ours. He separated the trailer and tractor when he went over, the trailer went into our yard missing the small fruit trees and our carport and panel truck; on it's side. The tractor stayed in the street, on passenger side, but was facing the way he'd been coming. Our local tow has a semi mounted rig that is big enough to winch that stuff up; the driver got a few bruises, the rig got righted and hauled away. That explained why nobody had a carport near the curb all the way along our street....

Our house in the country had wood floors throughout the entire main floor. Every Saturday morning mom would pick up all the small rugs from all the rooms and drop them on the large rug just inside the door that led from our living room out to the deck in front of our house. She would then drag them through the door and onto the deck, sweep all the rooms and mop her way out the same door where she could then shake the rugs out and drape them over the railings to air out. I loved this part of the day because I got to sit on the couch and watch cartoons until the floor dried. (Or should I say not dare step foot on that floor until it was dry?) One Saturday, before mom could get the rugs shook out, it started to rain. She walked out the door and grabbed an armload of rugs. As she tossed them inside I think I heard her start screaming before I heard the rugs hit the floor. She ran in the house screaming "rat, rat, a rat just ran out of the rugs and into my sewing room". I tried to calm her down by telling her it could not have been a rat because dad would not allow a rat to live on our property and that it was probably just a mouse that our miniature schnauzer would be sure to sniff out and make quick work of. She insisted it was a rat and was almost crying, looking back, I am not sure if it was the "rat" or the thought of the work it was going to take her to empty out the closets and move everything else up on top of her big table in an effort to find it. Hours passed, I could still hear mom shoving things around mumbling not so kind things about what she had in store for the fury little vermin. I was getting hungry and took advantage of the situation by sneaking into the kitchen from the other end. (The basement stairs were in the center of the house and the kitchen, living room, sewing room and dining room were in a circular layout around them.) As I poured my cereal I heard a bunch of clicking and looked to my left to see what it was. There, on the floor, in the center of the doorway to the sewing room was a chipmunk, tail straight in the air, feet spread out on the wood floor, looking back and forth at me and from where mom had unknowingly chased him out of. Just then, our little schnauzer, Missy, came to investigate what sort of goodness she heard being poured into a bowl. When she spotted the chipmunk all hell broke loose!! Both the dog and the chipmunk were spinning out on the wood floor heading toward mom who had been alerted by me screaming "no, no, Missy, no!". I wish there were a video of the four of us running laps inside the house, mom running from the chipmunk, the chipmunk from the dog and me after the dog trying to save the chipmunk... I do believe we would have been in the money on America's Funniest Home Videos. Eventually, the chipmunk exited the raceway, through the dining room and down the stairs into the mudroom where Missy spent her nights. Unable to find the little bugger to chase back outside, we just shut the door behind Missy that night. In the morning I went straight to the mudroom and opened the door, there was Missy, standing in the middle of the room looking so very proud of the poor little chipper between her front paws.

In Aug, 2005, we decided not to evacuate our home in Southern MS, 200 miles east of NOLA, and 3/4 mile from the beach, because we had 3 dogs and had never had a drop of water in house. The morning of Hurricane Katrina, we ended up walking to our next door neighbor's two story house in waist high water and 125 mph winds. My husband made the trip repeatedly to move dogs. Later that day, we watched waves with white caps slam into our front door at the end of the cul de sac. And kids joy riding in small boats, being carried along with the flow.
Somehow it wasn't as scary as it sounds, and we got through it, with 5 feet of water in our home. We were lucky, had adequate flood insurance, and were back in our home by June 2006. After a year of living in the garage, with relatives, and a FEMA trailer, we learned there's really "No place like home."

I remember a similar story about a wild turkey in Newton, MA that wouldn't let the mailman deliver the mail. All his co-workers laughed at him until his supervisor went with him one day and found out he was telling the truth. The people in the neighborhood had basically adopted it so they had to pick up their mail at the post office.

vickyzzzz, I also live in the East Mtns. Your story is really creepy!!!! Fortunately I've never had anything like that happen in my house!

I have 4 operational clerestory windows. In the spring and summer they are usually open all the time. The screen came out of one of them and I had not climbed up on the roof to refit it. One day a hummingbird flew into the house through that open window. Of course he could not find his way back to the screen-free window but kept flying from one to the other of the 3 screened windows. I brought out a red saucer with sugar water to try and attract it. No luck. I grabbed my rag mop and kept holding it up, hoping it would lite on it. No luck. It kept landing on a ceiling fan blade to rest but would not come to the mop. I finally grabbed a red shirt I had and wrapped it around the mop head and held it up to the fan. The little thing finally rested on it and I was able to cup my free hand over the bird and carry it outside.

Another time I had my French doors that lead to my back deck open. A scrub jay flew in. It ended up in my bedroom. I have an exterior door in my bedroom. I opened that door and again grabbed my mop trying to direct it to the open door. It flew from the top of one window blind to the other to the bed to the top of my closet door jambs, etc. I decided to just let it be. I left the room, closing the inside door behind me. About an hour later I peeked in and the bird was perched on top of a blind. An hour later he was gone, but left some "presents" behind on my window sill ;)

Hmm, so many oddities. There's the rare Sampson's fox in the backyard, the thief who came with the equipment necessary to climb up to and cut down this angel (...really, who steals an angel?), turkey parades, the deer who befriended my dog, cows loose on the beach at our summer place, or the fact that I've had lightning strike within three feet of me twice (I stay away from my loved ones now during storms.) And in the weeks after my sister died, she made it abundantly clear that she happily survived her passing.

But probably the funniest was the December day I tried to shake a large frozen pumpkin out of the urn I'd had it displayed upon. It was frozen solid. We sit up on a hill, and when the darned thing finally shook free, it rolled across the lawn and down the hill, picking up speed, into the street, where I saw it turn to roll directly down the street and around the corner -- a big orange bouncing boulder -- accelerating downhill at what I could hear was an approaching car. I heard screeching brakes and probably a swerve, but thankfully no crash. I can't imagine what the driver must have thought. We also set up one of those 18' wide inflatable pools one year at the edge of the lawn along that hillside over the road, only to come home the first day it was full to find it had emptied itself into oncoming traffic while we were out. It had taken days just to fill; can't imagine what its contents looked like whooshing all at once down the hill and into the road, like a Central Massachusetts tidal wave. Oops!

Groundhog in airvent..

The front of our house has a great big picture window and siding. We live on a 90 degree curve, and we've had 46 people miss the curve since 2001. Before we moved there, a car missed the curve, went airborn, somehow missed the trees in the front yard, and ended up in the living room. They couldn't match the brick.

Me and my family have always loved animals. So one day, our first cat named Tigger starts attacking a random spot on the un painted walls, and starts chewing his way through the wall. My mother flipped out and I swear, that cat lost almost all of his nine lives! We patch up the dent in the wall a few days later. No biggie right?
After Tigger passes, we get two dogs. Chevy and Dodge. Cutest puppies in the world. A couple days after we got them, they start attacking a random spot on the STILL untainted walls in out living room. They almost go through the wall before we get home from a relaxing dinner out, and we stop them. We patch that whole up.
Literally, not even four days later, one of our thirteen chickens gets in the house accidentally and runs straight into the living room before we are able to catch it, and starts going at the wall, like Scissorhand style!! Except with its beak. And no sharp blades involved. Anyway, bad analogie. It's the same spot the dogs went at.
Finally dad connects the dots and starts removing pieces of the wall. Very slowly. When he finally gets a quarter sized whole cut, he steps back and hears something. He puts his ear up to the whole. Dad suddenly jerks his head back, clutching his ear in pain. He had some very colorful words for the whole situation when he explains he got stung by a wasp, and how there are probably 5 nests in the wall.
Somehow there was a whole in the siding where they had been going in and out. The pest guy was amazed and he literally took selfies when the had put up a wire net and extracted the siding of the wall, cause they wanted to see how many there were. His boss even came over just to take pictures cause he had never seen anything like it. Apparently the wasps had made their homes our home for about 3 years!!!! My family had to leave for a week while they treated the house and the wasps. It was bad.

lake 1114 it appears that all the things you did you prevent the cardinal's attacks, were things that might attract him. Don't know much about birds, but I had a robin do the same thing to my downstairs sliding glass door.

Our GM auto burned our house to the ground while parked in the garage....

CURRENTLY, in my late 1800's bungalow basement where all of the pipes and wires are exposed (no ceiling, just wooden rafters) there will be an occasional leak that comes directly from the rafters and I finally did see where it was 'dripping' which is about a foot from the front of the chimney in the basement (again, all water pipes are below this area and exposed.) It can range from a drip now and then to just 2 days ago a few cups came raining down. From the main level it would be in the living room area around the fireplace but there is absolutely no water source in this area, no rain, no snow, the roof is dry, nothing is draining...there isn't a pipe there anyway. I cleaned out the fireplace, no moisture in or around there. It'll be dry for weeks and then decide to drip. Just plain strange. To be continued...

Sustainable that's awful -- so sorry!

rose-all the things we did where at the suggestion of "bird experts" This guy just liked us. I am not quite sure what people expected us to do. One time he left for several weeks and we thought he was gone but he came back. So we gave up on trying to find a way to make him stop and enjoyed his beauty until one day when he left and never came back. He obviously like us and our house. People really should not be so judgmental as we tried everything we could think of to help/stop him-aside from shooting him of course.

Bird brained, crazy as a loon, silly as a goose, dumb as a dodo, sitting duck... Some birds are just not real bright! That pretty much goes for every living species on the planet. Watch the news, read the paper, heck, just walk through a mall and see it first hand, some people are just like the bird "bashing" itself into the window. I'm guilty of this myself; ever see someone so involved in a text while walking that they smack into something? They glare at whatever fixed object it was like it should not have been there and then continue on with their nose to the screen. I see birds all over "challenging" their reflections in shiny chrome bumpers of parked semi tractors, side view mirrors of cars, windows of any sort, pretty much anything they see that looks like them. Birds developed a "pecking order" for a reason, to weed out the weak genes so as to ensure the future of their kind. If they had not been doing that since the beginning we all would have to board up our windows with nice padded cushions to protect the thousands of feathered lunatics constantly "bashing" themselves to death. Didn't mean to hijack this thread, but come on!! There are innocent little humans being deprived of proper care all over the world, if you feel the need to protect something, I know of many organizations that would love to have your help!! Now, lets hear about some weirdness. Anyone ever have a couple teenager boys run in through their back door and out the front door only to be followed by two policemen? If so and you live in Iowa, I apologize... If it is any consolation, I was trying to keep up with my buddy and thought he knew the people that lived there. Nice place by the way, loved the dark wood floors!

Here in north central Florida, my husband & I were watching tv one night in our family room which had the original tile floor (12x12's from mid-1980's), covered with a big area rug. Out of the blue, this popping noise began, sounding like REALLY LOUD microwave popcorn, but the noise was coming from the floor! I jumped out of the chair, and I could "feel" the vibrations of the noise coming from under the rug! I thought for sure our house was about to be swallowed by a sink hole!! (If you've never heard of that, you'll have to google it. It's one of the things you worry about when you live in central Florida!) The popping noise continued & we saw our tiles form a "pup tent" along the grout lines! My second thought was that our house must have been built on a cemetery or an Indian grave site and that the ghosts were coming to get us! I grabbed the cat and hubby & I ran out the front door! I fully expected to see giant cracks down our drive way and that I would witness the house sinking into the ground, swallowed up by the sink hole. But, outside...nothing, just the calm night. We let ourselves back into the house. The popping noise had slowed down & we realized it was only occurring in the tiled areas of the house, not the wooden floor areas...A google search of "popping tile noise" gave us our answer. We had never heard of such a thing before! Apparently it's the thinset (the glue that holds the tiles down) that, for whatever reason, "pops" and releases the tile. "Normal" wear & tear (!?!?), or so says the insurance company! So, now we have a beautiful new tile floor that we hadn't planned on...

fightindm-that would have scared the s... out of me!! Thank goodness for you that that was all it was.

In my previous home, there was a kitchen clock hanging over the picture window, which was over the sink. It was battery-powered, the face ringed by green plastic that was ridged on the reverse side, so you could hang it off your finger, if you chose? It was secured on a hook that was professionally installed, it was for a previous electric clock, and it was secured by pipe cleaner that was twisted multiple times at the end, and had been there for years. One night, I heard a noise and looked in-the clock had somehow gotten loose, bounced in the sink, on the way back up, it caught on the handle of the faucet, one of those with the single thingy to turn on the water, it was a shaft with a small protruding piece on top. The ridged part of the clock had caught on that protruding piece on the way back up, turned the water on, and then fell back into the sink. What if I had been away? And there wasn't anything wrong with the pipe cleaner, it did not unravel or break, and nothing was wrong with the hook. I simply put it back where it belonged, turned the water off, and said a prayer,

A few years ago I took a job about 120 miles from home (I commuted on a weekly basis). After I was there some time, a co-worker mentioned that before he met his wife, she had lived in my small town.

I was curious about where she lived, of course. After a few days he told me that he had "asked "her, and she named the street. It was my street.

The street is only a block long, so I was pretty sure I'd recognize the house if he described it.

"Well, it was a ranch house, kind of uphill from the street..."

Yeah...

"It had two driveways, one left over from before the original garage was turned into an inlaw unit..."

Really?...

"...and it had a sidewalk that just ended at the property line. It was the only house on the street that had one."

Yup. It was my house.

Last year I walked into my dining room and came face to mask with a raccoon. It was the coldest night of that winter, and I could not get the raccoon to leave my house. I live alone, and I was scared to death of my intruder, so I tried to lure him out the front door with dog food. But each time I tried, he’d run back inside before I could get back in the house to shut the door. Finally some neighbors scared him back into the chimney and I boarded the fireplace up and moved every piece of furniture up against the board. And I could still see his raccoon fingers trying to slide the board over to get back in my house! After two or three days he finally left the chimney and I had it capped.

That time a tree hit my house and would have killed us had we been sitting outside....I will never, ever forget that sound.

Last Holy Thursday I was quietly enjoying an afternoon tea in the living room when something caught my eye. A small, fluffy, light grey bunny was hopping along towards the kitchen. I have no idea how that adorable bunny got in my house. I have no neighbors (I live on an environmental reserve) so it must have been a wild bunny that felt safe enough to hop inside when I wasn't looking. Last year there was a family of small rabbits nesting near the house so I guess they came back. Anyway, I let it outside and watched it joyfully hop hop hop away to hide in some bushes. Absolutely precious...and just in time for Easter lol

Thank you all for the great stories. Past our back fence the land slopes down in a pasture and further out is a beautiful marsh, which is feed by a creek. In 2007 it just poured rain all day and night, we never really thought anything of it. The next morning I went and looked out the back patio door and right past the barbed wire fence one of the neighbor kids paddled by in a canoe. It had rained so hard in twenty-four hours the creek was out, and flooded the marsh, which became a large lake. We had lake front property. Unfortunately though quite a few neighbors ended up with water in their basements.

Years ago, I convinced my husband to get us a hot air balloon ride for my birthday. There was a place near our home, where every Fall, you would see a bunch of them flying along in the sky. We booked the ride for September and it was a beautiful day. We were enjoying the ride and after an hour, the pilot said for us to begin preparations to land the balloon. Unfortunately, for one home owner, a gust of wind came and we landed the balloon - barely missing her home - on her on her mailbox! The balloon knocked over the mailbox and the furious owner, came out yelling at the pilot and crew. My husband and I were just happy to have survived this crazy ride.

I kept hearing scratching noises in my ceiling at night, and especially in the hour or so before dawn. I assumed it was a squirrel getting in and out. One night I got up to go outside, thinking I could figure out where it was getting in and stop it. While I stood there, in less than 5 minutes, I watched more than 50 bats fly up and under the board and batten siding that my father had put on when he built the house years ago. I called for help from our local extension service, and two nice young men came to look at the problem. They walked around the house, consulted quietly and came back with their verdict: “If you wanted to build a house FOR the bats, you couldn’t have done better!” They showed me how to create small mesh trap doors over every opening I could find, which would allow the bats to leave but not come back in afterwards. They said to leave the mesh there for 3 days and then seal up all the holes. It took days to get the mesh applied everywhere I could find a gap. I left it there for over a week, just to make sure all of them had left, and then went around with spray foam and filled in any gaps I could find.

I went to bed that night feeling secure in the knowledge that I had done a really thorough search and seal of gaps on the outside of my house. I woke up at 2am with a bedroom full of bats. They could no longer get out easily, so they came in instead. There were about 40 of them. I spent the night in my car and called for help in the morning. After removing the bats from the house, I spent the next two years slowly finding holes and sealing them up. It was a long process, but ultimately the bats are gone and the house is a lot less drafty than it used to be!

Growing up in Southern California you experience a lot of earthquakes. Some are nothing others are really scary. We were living in Valencia, 30 miles north of the epicenter, during the Northridge Earthquake of 1994. This one hit very hard while we were all asleep. The house was moving all over the place. I ran in grabbed my daughter and yelled at my son to follow me and my wife as we ran out the front door of the house. As we did a transformer blew up in the distance. I thought we were under some kind of attack, so we ran back in the house and out the back door. The house was like a theme park ride. We spent the next week camped in the backyard as the aftershocks continued. Some were so strong you could see the dust clouds coming off the mountains from them shaking.