tin coffin...

ITS A COFFIN. I found bones in there, a whole freaking skeleton, carefully laid out.

This is just... so far beyond the realms of bizarre that I'm .. stuck for words.

It's not just bones though, there's four little trinket-type things in there with it.. offerings? mementos?? and the whole thing's on a little bed of... get this.. HAIR.
Human hair, I think - loads of matted clumps, like you find in a hairbrush or that gets caught around the hoover spools.


The little objects are an aged mustard spoon, a brass button, a tiny pearl and a 5 cent French coin.



The coin is especially useful, as it dates the creature - 1917.

I think I'm beginning to be able to connect a few dots... it's getting more and more strange, yet exciting.

1. There's essentially a whole graveyard under the house, which shows that these creatures have been around for a good half a century, at the LEAST.

2. They seem to have developed complicated customs involving burying their dead that seem to indicate a strong famial or community-based attachment. This makes me think they are far more intelligent than your standard rodent, perhaps even self-aware

3. Yet to have survived so long in what seems to be an isolated group/area is very surprising and baffles me.. I keep coming back to what Mr. Lyman said in passing in that first conversation.. about Mr Kimball leaving his possessions 'to the pixie folk'.. Maybe he was aware if them, and how special they are. That would explain the (justified!) wariness of dogs, and the fact I was unwaware of them until his death - they would have to come looking for food if he was no longer a source..

hmmm... I need to know more; the curious part of me wants to rip up the floorboards and hunt them down, but at the same time I don't want to disturb this habitat of theirs that has provided their home for so long...

All I know is that I must find out more. I want to go back to the basement and have a proper look, see if I can find any evidence for any of this. It would be great if I could find a better-preserved body as well...

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Something smells fishy.. (or at least unpleasantly pungent)

There's definitely something not quite right about all this. I know, I'm doing the looking-for-trouble thing again, but just hear me out:
- it's DEAD. It's in the humane trap! It's not supposed to DIE!?! And not only that:
- I just removed it from the trap, and it SMELLS. I know dead things do that, but it smells like it's been dearly-departed for a good few DAYS. it was really horrible, I thought I was going to gag.
- I already decided that the evidence points towards larger critters (see the footprints in the bloodstains, amplitude of noises)
- there's no way this tiny little thing created the pawprints in the blood trail - it has three toes, for a start! (though I suppose blood stains aren't the most accurate guage of this)
I took a photo, for your viewing pleasure.. it looks way too NEAT, you know? it just seems... weird.
WARNING: FOLLOWING PHOTO NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART


So where does this leave me...? I guess I'm going down the 'something planted this mouse to put me off the trail' route. Which sounds ridiculous, but think about it:
the run-in with Scamps means that I'm aware of the existence of these creatures, they know this and are getting scared I'm going to realise they're more intelligent perhaps than your average mouse. They're worried I'm therefore going to get more proactive in my hunt for them, so they plant a dead mouse they found somewhere in their travels in rodent-land to make me second-guess myself and believe that the measures I already have in place are enough.
That suits them because they're clever enough to avoid all that, so as long as they sporadically feed mice into my traps, they can go on living their merry little lives while I think I'm tackling the problem.

Very clever! And it nearly worked! But I'm a step ahead..

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sketched out a few ideas

I was thinking more about what I know of this creature, and trying to visualise what it is I'm dealing with.. wow, I wish Scamp could talk.
For one, there's this weird hair-ball. I didn't look too hard at it (it was pretty disgusting), but it was dark-brownish in colour, and quite matted. Though that could have ben because of the blood. *shudder*
So I'm thinking long-haired? Or maybe it has a bushy tail.. Or even a little mane??

And the structure of the footrpints (two large and two small, thin paws) show it's on all fours (of course, this one was injured so I only had three prints..)



So.. thoughts?? Am I letting my imagination run away with me?? Feel welcome to offer any more sensible suggestions, because I'm getting quite freaked out, here.

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