Insulation work was supposed to happen yesterday and today as part of our construction project. Something about increasing the insulation in existing parts of the house so we don’t have arctic drafts in the winter.

But I don’t think the insulators showed up. I came home and discovered instead that some sort of woodpecker, presumably something prehistoric and of Jurassic size, had attacked walls all over our house.

In the front entry room.

The living room.

The powder room that I just painted last week.

The stairwell to the basement.

The stairwell to upstairs. I didn’t get a shot until after I had patched the NINE holes in this particular little stretch.

And more. Closets, bedroom walls, living areas all over the house. This particular woodpecker left perfectly round, two-inch holes. I know it’s an animal and not a crafty human because the holes are not in straight lines but rather have a certain random quality to them. This will make it even more fun to patch the holes, including plastering and sanding them 400 times each until it’s no longer obvious that a bunch of holes were made in the walls. Given my horrendous drywall plastering skills, I should be done with this patch job some time in 2017.

I also spotted a large snake trying to sneak into the house. I saw part of it near this truck, and I followed it.

Across the yard…

Behind the PODs container (sneaky snake)…

Through our little front garden…

Over the little fence and into the house.

Where it rounded the corner and headed up the stairwell, disappearing somewhere upstairs.

It was a semi-transparent beast and something was rattling swiftly through it, so depending on which end was in the house, it was either vomiting or pooping. I never found out, because I ran back out of the house after seeing it this far.

Sigh. I don’t know what is going on around here, but I have noticed this evening that the house is quite comfortable, albeit completely filthy.

Some guys came by this afternoon and stacked bricks in anticipation of masonry work tomorrow. Isn’t that neat and orderly?

It actually took me quite a while to take this placid picture. Some ANIMAL kept photo-bombing my shots.

There are a lot of beasts around these days.