Terrifying

We had a mouse at our house. One sneaky little rodent that I saw twice and my poor roommate saw several times. When I saw it, I had already been warned about it, so I wasn't surprised, nor was I too concerned. We live in an old house, the occasional mouse is bound to happen. Roomie busted out the mouse poison and while I was out of town, he (the mouse) died in a tragic way involving her(roomie's) closet and a coat, and was buried in an even more tragic way, with a couple of dishrags and a garbage can. She described to me the entire event, and honestly, the worst part of it to me was the fact that occasionally at night she could hear it scritch-scratching in her closet. Yuck. I wonder a few things about the situation, though. I wonder if I would have been OK with throwing its mousy corpse into a garbage can? Would I have jumped onto furniture if I had seen it without warning? Would I be the squeamish girl? One thing is certain, though. I could not have handled listening to it at night.
I am afraid of the dark. I am not afraid of rodents or spiders or snakes, I am a grown woman who is terrified of the dark. I successively turn on every light in the house from the front door to my bedroom, backtracking to each one once the next is on, so that I do not have to walk into a dark room. There is even a lamp immediately next to my bed so that I can have it on when I turn out my bedroom light and jump into bed. The lamp is reachable from my bedside, so that I only turn it off once I am under the covers. And when I say jump into bed, I mean that quite literally, because of the next thing that I am still afraid of. I call it the "Ankle-Grabber." It is (I am sure of it) under my bed. Never mind that there is no way anything could fit under my bed, except for the occasional stray sock on laundry day, I am sure that as soon as it is a little bit dark, there is an Ankle-Grabber waiting under my bed. I could sleep on a mattress on the floor, on a couch, or even in a sleeping bag, and I would still be certain that there is something under there where I sleep just waiting to grab my ankles. I do not know if it is man or beast, scaled or furry, I just know that it wants to grab my ankles. I don't even know what it wants to do with my ankles. I just know that I have to make a flying leap onto my be from at least 2 1/2 feet away in order to stay safe from the faceless entity. Not knowing is the most fear-inspiring thing about it! Which leads me to my next fear. Bugs that I can not identify. I studied under an entomologist at the University of Minnesota. (that means bug-expert) I had to identify all sorts of bugs. We even did an extensive project trying to identify every species of bug on campus... (the statisticians were actually the scariest part of that project.) And I learned a lot of bug names. The funny thing is, once I know the name of a bug, I'm not scared of it anymore. That's why I can handle most spiders and even a millipede or a cockroach. I just can't handle not knowing what it is. especially if it has lots of legs or is capable of making any sounds.
There you have my top three fears. These are not the things that give me anxiety, that list could go on for hours. These are the things I am actually afraid of, so you can see how a mouse scratching in a closet at night would be terrifying to me. Nameless, faceless sound from somewhere over there, just waiting to get me as soon as I set a foot out of bed... Its probably my own fault for the fears. I used to hide under my sisters beds at night and grab their ankles.