Whatever it is, it decided to make quite the large amount of noise last night, not as in vocal noises but bumping into things and stepping on cardboard and the likes. I'll go into some more detail.
First and foremost i am semi-suburban and bordering a national park so there is plentiful wildlife around. I know for a fact that rats and or mice live in the yard and under the house. We get plenty of brushtail possums and the occasional owl or too around at night, also some lurking neighbours cats.
The area under the house that the animal is moving around in is at the most 15 inches in height, i hear it enter at around 11pm most nights and moving around well past then, it seems to squeeze through a relatively small gap, nothing a cat or possum couldn't squeeze through though. With some basic logic that is a strange time as it is too late for a diurnal creature to be returning to sleep and strange for a nocturnal creature to return at that specific time most nights. When the household is noisy and everyone is awake it seems to remain quiet but i often hear it quite clearly when the house is quiet and i'm reading or when i wake up at night.
We do have a dog that occasionally ventures under the house, but is too big to go that far in (house is built on a slope). Therefore it isn't deterred by the scent of dog. At first i was thinking it was likely the neighbours cats going under to hunt mice or rats, but a lot of things strike as unusual, first and foremost it isn't the stealthiest of creatures, secondly i haven't heard the squawking of a dead rat or any sporadic movements like rats or mice are being hunted, thirdly i've never seen the cats actually enter our yard, just sit on the fence and tease the dog.
Judging by the sounds of it moving around it would fit the size category of a possum or cat however in terms of it being a possum - i've never heard of possums going under houses and i haven't heard any possum vocal noises coming from down there, and they tend to be quite vocal.
So i'm a little bit stumped, i haven't seen any foxes in the 8 years i've lived in this area and i regularly go for walks at night, it could be an especially stupid cat. I was actually tempted to set up a little camera and see what is actually going under... i wouldn't really know how to go about it though. What do you guys think, cat, possum or something else?
