After rinsing my shampoo this morning, white bubbles pooled at the drain without vanishing.  As I'm no particular friend of the environment, my five- make that ten- (fifteen, if you're timing it) minute shower led to three inches of accumulated water.  Though some of it disappeared down the pipes, I had no question there was an obstruction most of it couldn't pass.  I unscrewed the drain cover and discovered the pelt of a small animal, previously unregistered in any encyclopedia.  From what I could gather, it used to have somewhere between eight and ten hairy legs, a diameter of at least six inches, and enough long hair to insulate itself on the coldest of Arctic nights.  Why (or how) it made its way from its natural climate to my bathtub, I may never know, but it must have been disappointed squeezing through so many miles of pipeage before dead-ending beneath my drain cover.  Perhaps that was the groaning I heard in the PVC under my house?