COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

They’re here. No one is sure what they are, but they are definitely here. It begins like this. One morning last week, my wife notices something strange in the backyard, which in our case is immediately behind the house. Strewn around the lawn are chunks of ground cover and scraps of black plastic that was, until that morning, beneath the ground cover to discourage weeds, which are discouraging. Strangest of all, two of the plastic covers on a drain system underneath the yard have been popped off and are lying upside down on the grass. The speculation begins immediately. Vandals? Doubt it. One or more animals? Maybe, but the drain covers render that scenario only slightly less weird. To pop those drain covers off, I have to get on my knees, which I do now and then, and pry them off with a screwdriver. I don’t know a lot about animals, but unless I’ve missed something, they don’t carry screwdrivers.

My wife’s first suspicion is neighborhood cats, but those suspects are eliminated straight away because of the screwdriver conundrum. Any animal that can pop those drain covers is big, strong and has hands or feet that can grip — and grip tight. Opossums or raccoons move to the head of the list, and I lean toward raccoons because of those long, slender toes and the fact that being a few blocks from three golf courses, our neighborhood is a “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” episode at night, with raccoons, opossums, skunks and other things that cannot be identified.

But the entire investigation was thrown into a tailspin when I had an epiphany in the middle of the night. What if the drain covers weren’t popped off from above, but pushed up from below — as in, from inside the drain? Eeewww is right. I immediately assume the worst, a combination of Reggie the Alligator being back in the news this week and my profound, lifelong aversion to things that slither and slide in dark places. Estimating the drain’s width at four inches, I have visions of a small alligator, a large ferret, a South American anaconda or my worst fear: a brown Norway rat the size of a Chihuahua that has followed me here from the Bronx. My wife throws in a Komodo Dragon, abandoned like Reggie as a dragonette and now four-, maybe five-feet long, which doesn’t help. She then comes up with a plan. The plan is for her to jam the hose into each drain opening while I stand out at the curb to see if anything comes running out, which is exactly what worries me — the running out part.

I can easily see something from “Aliens” bursting out of the drainpipe into the street and attaching itself to my throat, with Sigourney Weaver nowhere to be found. “Ripley, quick, it’s over here!” I asked if I could do the hose jamming and she could do the drainpipe watching but was told that was not in the plan.

I put on some ski gloves, grab a seven-iron, position myself behind a car about 400 yards from the house and shout “Turn it on!” as loud as I can. It takes a few seconds for the water to appear but nothing comes out with it, which pleases me greatly.

Two mornings later, it’s a rerun: ground cover and black plastic strewn around the yard, drain covers popped off — only now there is a twist, a challenge, a gesture to let us know that whatever is out there knows who we are and where we live. One of my wife’s rubber gardening shoes has been chewed up, bad, and tossed into a fountain where it floats, face down, gnawed and dead. This time, it’s personal.

A call to Costa Mesa animal control is not too conclusive. According to the critter cops, if it’s a rat, you call the Orange County Vector Control District. If it’s a critter other than a dog or a cat, you call a pest control company, and if you manage to trap it yourself — I’m sorry, do I look like Jeremiah Johnson? — they come out and pick it up.

Next stop, Orange County Vector Control, although I still don’t understand why they call it that. They are very pleasant and send an official vector controller to inspect the evidence. His best guess based on long experience is a raccoon, which does not excite me but is a definite step up from an anaconda.

It turns out that some friends have a humane raccoon trap, which is what we’re going to try next, followed immediately by a call to animal control if we find something in the trap snarling and hissing and hopping up and down. If the trap doesn’t work, I’m not sure what’s next. I’ll let you know. And that, in a drainpipe, is the gist of our Memorial Day weekend.

A strange way to start the summer, I tell you. I gotta go.