At around 8:00 a round of frantic screaming wafted into my apartment from down the hall. I figured this was just another emphatic greeting of unusually large proportions.

Then, some time later, another round of screaming began. And another. Each separated by some twenty or thirty minutes. By the ninth round (seriously) I figured I should find out what was going on.

I learned three things.

First, these screams each came from different groups (usually pairs) of people. Second, these groups were independently discovering that a mouse was romping about the hallway. Third, none of them (until the ninth) thought this was an event worth mentioning to anybody else.

Personally I think if you encounter a critter in your house you should either get rid of it yourself or call someone else who can. In this case, it took nine rounds of discovery and reaction to reach such a conclusion.

For the record, I haven’t seen so much as a mosquito here until now. We don’t get a lot of non-human visitors this high up the building. And if we didn’t have elevators I doubt we’d even have many of those.

When I first signed up with Zipcar they had cars parked literally right next to my building. Then they got rid of those.

So I switched to driving the Prius that’s actually a bit of a walk, but, hey, it’s a Prius.

Now I went to reserve it… and it’s not there anymore. It’s been replaced by a Honda Civic – a model that’s already parked about half the distance from here. That doesn’t seem entirely fair.

I approve of relocating cars to where they’re more useful. I just don’t approve of relocating them, ya know, away from me.

My building is well insulated against sound traveling between apartments. I once was able to hear some muffled music from up the hall, but it’s been otherwise silent (barring people actually hammering pictures up on the wall when they move in).

Sound from the hallway, though, permeates my front door like water through air. I’ve heard many cell phone conversations conducted there. I’ve heard the neighbors’ loud parties getting broken up (but not the parties themselves). I’ve possibly even heard the comings and goings of criminals back when there were criminals living across from me.

This is why it’s of some concern that my neighbors have not yet deciphered the great mysteries of the modern key.

Since they moved in I keep hearing knocking from across the hall, growing more and more intense over time, with added shouting and cursing occasionally. See, it seems the people who come most frequently to this apartment either do not carry or do not know how to use… keys.

So for anyone else out there who still has not mastered the concept, please understand: there exist bits of metal that are capable of opening locked doors. You can get them from your landlord, usually for no extra cost – they just come free right there with your lease.