I shared my cabin with M, S, and a bunch of sexually advanced, tanned, handsome, not very smart boys who allied themselves with the male counselors and spent the week engaged in apparently successful romantic conquests. A cabinmate I’ll call W, because I have no memory of his name, and the W stands for “Whatever,” spent the week passively tormenting the rest of us and boasting about his exploits with the prettiest girl in the camp. The torments consisted of challenging us to perform unpleasant acts, like sniffing a pair of old underwear someone had found in a closet or confessing our innermost thoughts.

Two weeks before Christmas, we heard a scrabbling sound in the ceiling above our bathroom. We live in a residential neighborhood not far from the edge of town, and so animal infestations are not uncommon. I, however, am from the suburbs, where such problems are outsourced to professionals, so I opened up the phone book and called the first animal-extraction company listed: A-Arrow Exterminators.