It’s been going on for over a week - I think I’m going mad. At dusk through twilight, every night. I’m faintly aware of some rustling - a movement behind me or beside me. Focused, as I am, on the computer screen in front of me I only catch the narrowest of glimpses as I turn sharply to look where I thought I heard something.
I think I see things in the corner of my vision - darting hither and yon. I start questioning my grip on reality - things are beginning to crumble.
Then one night I awake in a start. Fully awake in that semi-panicked lucidness one experiences when alarms go off. Only, there were no alarms, merely a scratching. The scratching against cardboard. I thought it was coming from the alley-way outside my door. This was odd, certainly, but it seemed truly bizarre my brain could interpret that as a threat.
Then I realized, ominous, that the scratching came not from the out of doors but from my kitchen.
So, with trepidation I enter the kitchen and reach for the lightswitch. As soon as the lights blink on there is silence, merely the softest of thuds punctuating the cessation of the infernal “scritch scritch scritch”.
Nothing stirs. I cast about looking for a probable source - bleary eyed fatigue coming upon me rapidly. I find nothing. Frustrated and more than a little wary, I return to my quarters - closing the door and blocking the threshold.
This evening, I sat, aglow with the victory over a vanquished final exam. Feasting on the finest muffins and donuts in all the land I luxuriated for an evening’s recreation on the internet.
My reverie was perturbed by the rustling of plastic - like someone stepping on a grocery bag. Then from the crevace between a Rubbermaid container tub and my counter something emerged.
From the shadowy depths it came, unhurried, unafraid. It came out, blinking, into the low-carbon footprint light and cast its gaze upon me.
I stopped what I was doing to turn and face my foe.
He was filled with trickery, he’s beady black eyes filled with the mischief of thousands of generations of his kin. I stared silently back at him. Neither of us knew what to say - so we said nothing.
We knew then, the war was on.
In this first phase I’m attempting an end-run. I hope to take him alive, so I may parade his shame before he is exiled. 
As you can see here - I’ve made a fiendish entrapment device to capture my devilish adversary.
He merely alights atop my strategically placed box of Pirates of the Burning Sea CSG to gain access to the device wherein lies the butter of peanuts.
He simply slips through the aperture and his fate is sealed.
This is but the first phase in what may be a prolonged battle of attrition against a wiley foe.
While the odds are not good, I am confident that in the end - I shall be victorious.
The forces are arranged, gambits made - and so, the game begins.