Dave woke to a draft playing across his face.

Going downstairs he was greeted by a veritable horde of squirrels going through his kitchen.

Blinking several times still didn't remove the vision of carnage.

They'd opened his cupboards and the refrigerator. Those little furballs had poured out everything and anything edible had been consumed.

He was enraged and surprised in equal measure. Trying to close the door again had him becoming the center of attention for all the little furred bastards. One had tried to sneak through the door while it was still open. It was now squawking up a storm trying to get back into the kitchen before the door closed.

Squirrels were upon the thin wooden door in milliseconds. They chewed through the thin outer layer in the blink of an eye, Dave was standing dumbstruck behind the door, listening to the carnage on the other side.

He turned around, trying to make his way to the exit in an attempt to escape this madhouse.

The squirrels caught up to him before he'd gotten around the corner leading to the door outside. Less than six steps and they'd chewed through a wooden door.

Dave became terrified and started sprinting. He bounced off the wall to round the corner more quickly. The impact threw off most of the squirrels sticking to him.

He made it to his front door in a few leaps. This door was made from thick, solid wood to insulate the house from icy cold winters this far north.

Dave slammed the door behind himself.

A few squirrels were still stuck to his back. They'd ripped apart his clothes, but he couldn't feel any of them drawing blood. Hence he chose to brush them off instead of slamming his back against the wall or dropping to the ground and rolling.

Dave caught a squirrel in his hand as he brushed them off. He held it up to his face to examine it. The little guy was struggling hard, trying to scratch him, but couldn't seem to draw blood.

He let it go when it got turned around and managed to bite him. It didn't draw blood, but the disrespect made him reflexively drop it, and off it went.

Dave was left standing in front of his own house. Evicted by woodland creatures.

He still had to show up to work, remotely, that was. But still, he was working with a time limit here.

These squirrels would eventually run out of edible things, mill around a bit, then leave. This was still the least confrontational method of clearing them out.

He had a better idea though.

The garage held the large freezer filled with roadkill, which might present a path to salvation.

He went and grabbed some cuts of meat.

Dave walked towards the forest and kept a lookout for the wolf.

Once it spotted him he waited for it to approach him and backed away towards the house, still holding both pieces of meat.

He slowly opened the back door and threw them onto the ground, just inside his kitchen.

As soon as he had opened the door, the squirrels quickly changed their mind and vacated the area through the previously broken window.

Now all Dave had to do was wait for the wolf to carry off both pieces of meat.

While that was happening, he went upstairs and thought about what he should do.

The first squirrel had somehow managed to break a window, possibly just a fluke, but now there was a precedent.

Keeping the wolf around would keep away the squirrels, but it could be dangerous and unpredictable.

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Hell, maybe it didn't want to stay and would just walk off someday.

Eventually he came to the conclusion that just boarding up the windows with thin sheet metal would be best.

Hank sold some of the stuff for cheap.

He changed his clothes to some non-destroyed, non-pajamas and went to work.

After eh got off work, he drove to Hank's in his truck.

At the convenience store, he grabbed a large amount of thin metal sheets and brought them to Hank.

“What do you need all these metal sheets for?” Hank asked.

“I need to block my windows to prevent squirrels from getting inside.”

“You know that I sell iron bars, specifically to block wild animals from breaking your windows.”

“Those are for bears, I said squirrels.” Dave repeated, annoyed.

“You sure it was a squirrel? Those things are too light to break a window.”

“Pretty sure. Maybe other people in the area will come complaining about a rowing band of squirrels. “Youknow, like those city-folk with their raccoon infestation.”

“What raccoon infe- Oh, right. Yeah. I remember. This might be related to that.”

“I bet it's the government testing some biological agent or something, better take another shower when you get home.” Hank said with annoyance in his voice.

“Sounds unlikely, but sure. Doesn't cost me anything to be safe and it might be some kind of super-rabies.”

When he walked back to his truck he heard an ethereal, echoing shattering sound. Which made Dave almost drop the sheets of metal.

After he leaned the sheets of metal against his car, he turned around and walked back to Hank.

“Did you hear that too?” Hank asked.

“Yeah, what the fuck was that.”

“Let's check the store for broken windows, but that came from above, not from behind me.”

They did a quick check of the store. There were no broken windows.

“Let's listen to the radio or turn on the TV.” Hank said.

Hank turned on the TV.

“-ave reports coming in from all over the country of a sound being heard, regardless of the place or seeming physical obstruction.” A female voice came in over the radio, sounding slightly panicked.

“Here in the studio it seemingly coincided with the launch of a Soyuz rocket carrying three astronauts to the ISS. It is likely just a coincidence, but tune in later to hear more.”

“Well that was odd.” Dave sighed.

“I'm just glad that I'm not going crazy, or at least that everyone else heard it as well.”

“The whole world is going crazy.”

He drove back home.

Dave grabbed a box of nails and gloves from the garage. Walking to the broken window he carefully considered how to best fix this. There were still bits of glass stuck in the window, so he put on the gloves and removed them, carefully. Nailing the sheet metal to the outside was tricky, but he got it done.

He touched the metal, it was very cold. A major problem for the temperature of his kitchen. The garage had some old rockwool laying around from fixing minor problems around the house. He cut a piece of insulation into shape and stuffed it into the cavity from the inside. Then he nailed another piece of sheet metal over the window to lock the insulation inside.

With the window finally fixed and itchy from the insulation, he went inside for a hot shower.

After the bath he waited until he was dry and nailed another two sheets over the window to his pantry, just in case.

The next nine months were relatively uneventful, no more strange noises swarms of animals or other stuff.

For him, that is.

The rest of the world were dealing with increasingly odd occurrences.

Animals were becoming more intelligent, there was no doubt about it. They developed other abilities from this intelligence. Up to and including actual speech and comprehension for ravens and some parrots. Anything believed to be fully sapient was declared a protected species. This law mostly protected above mentioned birds, a lot of whales and elephants.

There was an Indian elephant that had learned to read and write.

Other animals developed interesting abilities suggesting some increase in intelligence, but nothing as incredible as full sapience seen in some exceptions.

One notable outlier were insects. They had started increasing in size, while at the same time decreasing in number.

Dave was really happy that he did not have to deal with this change yet, as it was the deepest winter where his little house was positioned.

Stories from Australia had made him consider how far north he could move with his salary.

Plants down south had begun growing more in size, vibrancy or in other aspects that ended in entirely new abilities. Such as some, individual, trees of a species developing rudimentary traps for insects, while others did not.

On an entirely different note. Particle physics were in turmoil. Positrons were far more strongly affected by gravity, by as much as five times, whatever the consequences of that may be. On the macroscopic level very little had changed.

Dave kept feeding the wolf.

He decided to name it Lydia.