After a man discovered a mystery critter beneath the floorboards of his home, he was baffled and in need of help.
Robert Bishop, a music director at KUAF Radio, is an avid wildlife enthusiast who has regularly taken to TikTok to share videos of an assortment of critters that frequent his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Under the username “OvarkBob,” the passionate animal lover has posted clips of bats, opossums, his orange cat named “Gustav,” and more. He likely never expected that one of his TikToks would go viral, but that’s exactly what happened when one clip quickly amassed millions of views.
It all began when Bishop spotted a hole in his floorboards that he didn’t recall seeing before. “We have no idea where the hole came from,” the perplexed radio director told News 5. “I honestly don’t remember it being there when we moved in because I would have noticed,” he added. However, the mysterious hole, which led to a crawl space under his home, wasn’t the most interesting discovery. It was a critter, poking its nose through the hole in the man’s bedroom floor, that would intrigue the internet.
@ozarkbob Part 2: Getting really nosey about our bedroom #critter #groundhog #fyp #racoons
After seeing the mysterious critter poking its curious nose through the hole, Robert Bishop grabbed his camera and began to record the clip that would eventually go viral on TikTok, garnering millions of views and hundreds of thousands of interactions in a matter of days. “Getting really nosey about our bedroom,” Bishop quipped in the caption of the clip that he captured of his “new downstairs neighbor,” the NY Post reported.
Unsure what kind of animal was lurking under his home, a baffled Bishop took to the internet, asking his friends and followers what they thought it might be. He originally posted the video to Instagram before deciding to turn to TikTok, where he learned that the combination of a cute critter and a spontaneous encounter were the two key ingredients for a viral video, and including a mystery only perfected the viral video recipe as viewers eagerly chimed in with their many guesses.
@ozarkbob Woke up to some scratching under the bed and found a little hairy hand! #critter #fypシ #raccoonlife
“After a lot of them sent me DMs, I thought people on TikTok would like it too,” Bishop recalled. “I knew it would get attention, but after 10K, I was really shocked. It just kept growing too! Getting to 1 million was wild, but then it was 2, 3, 4, 5 million and going. But, I get it though, it’s a guessing game and people are excited trying to figure it out,” he continued. “I learned that you never know what’s going to hit so might as well upload things … people love animals, as well as a mystery.”
Although he couldn’t say with any certainty what species his new friend was, Bishop said he believed a raccoon or groundhog seemed to be the “most likely culprits.” Viewers and armchair animal experts guessed that the sniffling schnoz belonged to quite a variety of animals, including a badger, a bear, and even a dog, which prompted many comments about the temptation to put one’s finger in the hole in an attempt to pet the creature. Thankfully, Bishop had a smarter and much safer idea.
@ozarkbob New Neighbor Part 3: We set up a camera under our porch and got some eyes on the little guy! Gonna leave the camera up to see what else passes thru. #racoon #racoonsoftiktok #crittertok #fyp
Hoping to figure out what kind of animal the subterranean squatter could be, Bishop decided to investigate the issue further by putting some food down in the crawlspace next to another camera, and it seemed to have worked. Bishop was able to capture another clip, this one from under the house and featuring a raccoon, who was very likely the animal behind the nose. “Got some eyes on the little guy!” Bishop captioned the clip of the trash panda as it pillaged a dish of fruit the homeowner had left out for it.
While some of us might not be too thrilled with the thought of wild animals lurking under our home, the animal enthusiast, who previously raised a possum and has five cats with his fiance, couldn’t be happier about the encounter. “Growing up in Arkansas, I have always enjoyed encounters with various varmints,” he said. “I often go out of my way to find or engage with them because it’s just one of those special things in life—when you connect with a wild animal.”
