The Stranger in the Bathroom

[RobMancebo]

The stranger in the bathroom 
by Rob Mancebo 

I had a buddy who was wiring a newly constructed house outside of Red Bluff, CA.  It was out in the hills, but it was going to be an ultra-modern structure fully wired for security cameras, cable TV, a phone in every room, the works.  The place was nearly done, but the power wasn't on and the exterior doors weren't quite finished so they didn't lock yet.   Other than that it was looking good.  It already had white wall-to-wall carpet and he was always very careful about wiping his feet when he went in or out.
Dusk had settled, making the house even darker than usual and he was collecting his tools to leave when he thought he heard a noise from the back of the house.  He poked his head in and just gave it a quick check.  Hearing nothing further, he decided that it wasn't worth a search and left for the day. 
He was back on the job the next morning when it was light again, but as he walked, it felt as though the rug was 'squishy'.  He went and got his flashlight as it wasn't very light inside the house, and he found that the white carpet had a wet, red trail leading into the master bedroom.  It was pretty creepy, but it didn't take a detective to follow a bloody red trail on a white carpet, so he tracked it on through the bedroom and into the master bathroom.  He was relieved to find that it wasn't blood.  It was just a wide, sopping track of that wet, red, Northern California mud which gives 'Red Bluff' its name.  It was still a puzzle to him how it got all over though.  Until he looked closer at the toilet and found long brown hairs all over the rim.  Then he looked at the edge of the mucky trail on the carpet and recognized the red outline of bear tracks! 
Some bear had wandered by, nosed his way into the house and had taken a big, sloppy drink from that new toilet, then had wandered back out. 
He kind of broke out in a sweat remembering the noise he'd heard the previous evening and thinking about how he almost went back in to search a dark house with a bear in it.  He spent the morning scrubbing red mud out of the white rug with a big towel and he really made sure that he blocked the doors before he left.