Hospitality War Stories: No Check-in For Chip

These were full-volume, panic-inducing screams.

I immediately left my office and headed toward the commotion.

What I found was a group of housekeepers gathered near the elevator, all pointing frantically down the hallway while simultaneously moving in the opposite direction.

Several were already making for the nearest exit.

I looked around expecting to find some obvious source of danger.

Instead, I found nothing.

I asked what had happened.

Between excited explanations and frantic pointing, I eventually pieced together that a large, hairy rodent had been running through the hallway and had disappeared into an empty guest room.

At about that moment, my maintenance man appeared from another hallway to investigate the noise.

One look at his face told me he was just as confused as I was.

Together we headed toward the room the housekeepers had indicated.

We searched everywhere.

Under beds.

Behind furniture.

Inside closets.

Nothing.

There wasn’t a single sign of any rodent.

Eventually my maintenance man theorized that whatever had entered the room must have escaped through the vents in the heating and air-conditioning unit beneath the window. It was the only explanation that made any sense.

Satisfied that the crisis had passed, we informed the housekeepers that the monster was gone and they could safely resume their duties.

The remainder of the day passed without incident.

The next morning was equally uneventful.

Guests ate breakfast.

Guests checked out.

Housekeepers began cleaning rooms.

Everything appeared normal.

Then the screaming started again.

I headed down the hallway and found myself standing in almost exactly the same spot as the day before.

Two housekeepers stood outside the same room we had searched the previous afternoon.

“It’s in there!” one of them yelled.

My maintenance man arrived a few seconds later and let out a long sigh that seemed to say, “Here we go again.”

This time we didn’t have to search.

The moment we entered the room, we found our terrifying intruder.

It was a chipmunk.

A very small chipmunk.

The little creature was running frantically around the room, clearly trying to figure out how to escape.

The realization immediately raised a new question.

The room had been occupied the night before.

A guest had slept there.

The guest had checked out only a short time before the screaming began.

Which meant this chipmunk had apparently spent the entire night sharing a hotel room with a paying guest without either one causing enough concern to alert the front desk.

The more I thought about it, the funnier it became.

My maintenance man and I attempted to corner the tiny fugitive and guide it toward the door.

After several failed attempts, we finally had it moving in the right direction.

Then one of the housekeepers decided she was feeling brave.

She opened the door to see if she could help.

The chipmunk immediately took advantage of the opportunity, sprinting across her feet and into the hallway.

Her bravery lasted approximately half a second.

The screaming resumed.

We chased the chipmunk down the hallway, gradually herding it toward the nearest exit.

Eventually we managed to trap it in the entryway.

I opened the door.

The chipmunk bolted outside and immediately headed for the nearest tree.

I followed it to make sure it wasn’t planning another unauthorized stay.

As it climbed the tree, I informed it that if it wasn’t a paying guest, there would be no future check-ins.

The chipmunk ignored me.

To this day, I still wonder about the guest who occupied that room.

Did they know they had a roommate?

Did they hear it during the night and decide not to mention it?

Or did an entire chipmunk somehow spend the night in a hotel room without being noticed?

Some mysteries are never solved.