One morning a little over a month ago, I stumbled into the kitchen to make some coffee. In that hazy state of waking up, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary until I began pouring hot water into the French press and saw a small hole in the plastic bag covering a loaf of bread. I had double bagged this bread because it was from the bakery, and the bags those loaves are packaged in don’t keep them very fresh. Plus it adds extra protection against bugs and critters. Or so I thought.
The cone-shaped hole looked like a mouse had bore into the loaf, which made me panic to the point of becoming fully awake. I knew this apartment was too good to be true. There had to be something wrong with it, and this was it: we had mice. I inspected the loaf, hoping to find that some sort of bug had crawled through a gap in the window screen and then burrowed into the bread. When I couldn’t prove this theory true, I turned and noticed the loaf of pre-sliced, store-bought bread on the kitchen table. Its packaging had been ripped to shreds; the slices had been reduced to crumbs. All signs again pointed to mice, until my vision traveled up to the kitchen window, where I spotted a plum-size hole in the screen. We didn’t have mice; we had squirrels.
When we first moved into this place and it was still AC weather, I had installed these foam panels on either side of the window unit to keep in the cold. And in that respect, they worked great. They did not, however, keep the squirrels out. The squirrels chewed right through the panels; and after I had duct taped cardboard over the panels, these fearless, wall-scaling, window-ruining Minneapolis squirrels still kept coming back, scratching at the cardboard like dogs begging to be let back inside.
So when I saw the hole in the window screen, I knew it was the squirrels. I closed the window, then the kitchen door, followed by a search of the cabinets for any intruders. The thought of having squirrels traipsing around the apartment while I sleep made me fearful of ever sleeping again. I forgot about the coffee—it was no longer needed—I had to make sure there weren’t any squirrels in the rest of the apartment. Kate and I searched each room at least twice and didn’t find anything, so we left a message for our landlord in case he happened to look up and see a whole in his screen the next time he was in the backyard.
Our landlord is really down to earth, a great guy, but I’m kind of afraid that something’s going to happen that’ll put us into poor favor with him. Like the fact that we keep odd hours and when we walk around the apartment the floors creak. Since he lives in the unit directly below us and has a regular eight to four job, I’m worried he secretly hates us or is looking for a reason to kick us out. This is an amazing apartment, and I have this weird feeling that our living here will be more temporary than we hope.
Which is why I was hesitant to talk to the landlord about the squirrels. What if this was what cast us into the doghouse?
Of course, my paranoia got the best of me in this case. The landlord told us about how the squirrels have been a problem he’s fought for the last eleven years. He seemed more concerned about whether any of our belongings were damaged. Like I said, he’s awesome. He suggested we put a tray of rat poison mixed with peanut butter in the windowsill. And when we did this, the squirrels took the bait. The problem, here: the lethal concoction drew more squirrels to our window than we had ever seen scale the building. And what happened when we caught them in the act of snacking? They posed.
It wasn't easy to scare them away...
...and when we did succeed at scaring them, they just came back ten minutes later.
We went through almost an entire box of rat poison trays when we decided they just weren’t working. I had gone back home for a wedding—more specifically, Jenny Hartigan’s kickass wedding (which I’ll be writing about in the very near future)—and while I was home, Mama D received some advice from the fix-it dude about how to possibly get rid of the raccoons living beneath the back deck. Mothballs. Animals apparently hate mothballs, and after I returned to Minneapolis and Kate had purchased a box of mothballs, I found out why animals hate them. They smell like old people. And if there’s one thing that every being in this world can agree to hate, it’s the smell of old people. Dear fucking God, the horror.
Over the span of a week, the squirrels were no long rapping at our window. Either the mothballs worked, or all the squirrels had died from the rat poison. We were able to move on with our lives, and I tried to by finishing up the grand painting project. I only had two rooms left to paint: the bedroom and the office. I decided to paint the office first, because I had found out from talking to our landlord about the squirrels that he used that back room in his unit as the bedroom. I figured: paint that room first, get it over with in case I can’t finish it in one day, so I don’t piss him off and get kicked off. It doesn’t really make sense now that I think about it, but at the time I equated it to ripping off a bandage in one fell swoop, banking on the fact that ripping the bandage off wouldn’t open the wound of eviction.
So I got up early and had finished painting around all of the trim just after noon. I took a small break to check my email, see if maybe one of my students had sent me questions about homework and whatnot, then complete a crossword or three. Two hours later, it was time to paint again, so I unplugged my laptop and got back to it. At this point I was rolling. Not the ecstasy kind of rolling, or the ‘I’m on a roll type,’ but the painting with a roller kind. It wasn’t going as smoothly as I’d hoped because space was at a minimum. I didn’t initially move everything out of the room; it would have taken too long and caused some issues in the hall and other rooms. I just pushed the spare bed, the desk, filing cabinet, bookshelves and printer stand to the center of the room. In order to roll the area below the windows, I had to wedge myself between the wall and all the shit in the center of the room without touching the wall. My legs started to cramp in this position, and my back felt like it was on the verge of tweaking out. That’s when the world came to an end.
Just outside the office window, in the alley out back, I saw a white flash of light at the same moment I heard a zap so startling I though it had come from within my chest. The zap was followed by a hollow bang, like a large metal object had collided with an empty metal silo. A fireball fell to the alley. This all took place in less than five seconds and in that time, I thought a plane had experienced a malfunction upon takeoff and crashed into my neighborhood, ending my life as well as terminating my lease. It had finally happened: the dream apartment was no more.
Of course, my gut shot reaction was incorrect; I was fine. But I couldn’t stop shaking. The noise had been very unexpected and I had been trapped in a vulnerable position. When I finally regained my bearings and made it outside, I saw in the alley the charred remains of a squirrel, curled in the fetal position. A chorus of squirrels—all of whom started moving one way on their respective branches, then turned back and ultimately stayed in place, as if they were just as startled—began croaking in near syncopation. It sounded like they were morning the death of a fallen comrade, or maybe, perhaps, they were warning each other not to go near the live wire. Stay put, think things through, you’ll be okay, they said.
When the Fire Department showed up—the neighbors had called them—they asked what I had seen and if my power was out. I told them I saw the fireball and that my power had only flickered. I said this while keeping my hands in my pockets because I wasn’t sure if they were still shaking. They quickly left, seemingly disappointed that a plane hadn’t crashed into my building. I returned to my apartment and reset all the clocks that had gone out, then picked up my computer. I had unplugged it because I’ve heard too many friends and family tell me how their computers have gotten zapped for reasons beyond their control. Here, I thought, was an instance where my paranoia paid off.
Squirrels and electrical mishaps: you’re no match for this worrier.
No comments:
Post a Comment