<strong>Tiny Threats</strong><br/>A cellar with this kind of clutter gave shy rodents a hundred hollows to escape into. Trellis from last summer's vines was still wrapped with withered brown leaves, providing a teensy canopy to a beetle habitat where Ishi'd overturned clay pots in cup stacks. Chips large enough to accommodate a mouse marred most of the rejects. Disturbed beetles scattered along the meandering valleys of the uneven cobblestones, which were definitely not laid with heels in mind. Ishi wasn't available to issue an apology for that.<br/><br/>The first trap was dragged between wine rack and wall, to keep the hammer from snapping shut when triggered. That bait was long gone. Another had been triggered by a twig. It might've been that these were just not big enough, since on further inspection, the compromised grain sacks were more than just mouse-nibbled. A tear that took strength had spilled grain out across the table at a steady trickle. There were trails of scrap leading up into hidey holes in the cupboard, among Ishi's cheap taste in wines, between her sand-laden wheelbarrow and the all but ruined barrels where she'd mixed the mortar for her garden stones.<br/><br/>The ceiling was low enough for Ishi in her six feet to have hung a sheet, and that posed some issue for cracking a whip. All this breakable clutter from clay pots to wine bottles to hung laundry didn't provide any kind of space to fight in, really. But if something were to befall Ishi's sheets, they were at least in disrepair already. Someone had gone along the patterned fringe with a pair of scissors and reduced the edge to the ribbons of a tailor's scraps.