It’s been a week since the Rat Sorb, and the smell has finally dissipated, but a few minutes ago I heard something shuffling around in the walls. I can’t go through this again, so I decided to scare it out by screaming, and growling, and pounding on the walls like I was a vicious predator. But then I turned around and both of the cats were just staring at me disgustedly, like, “You’re embarrassing us all here,” and I was all, “Oh, fuck you, cats. At least I’m trying.” And that was when I noticed that our mailman was staring at me through the glass of the front door. I explained that I was trying to scare away the possible chupacabra that seemed to be making a home in my wall, and the mailman said, “Oh. It’s probably W. C. Fields,” and then I just stood there, because usually I’m the weird one in the conversation, and I wanted to appreciate the moment. Turns out, though, that there’s actually an escaped angry spider monkey named W. C. Fields who is stalking our area, and who just attacked a woman and trapped her in her garage for an hour. All of this is true, y’all.1
I looked up “spider monkey” on the Internet and apparently they’re afraid of pumas, so all this morning I’ve been playing the sounds of pumas screaming (on a loop) on my computer, and so far I haven’t heard any more noises coming from the walls, which I think pretty much confirms that we totally have a spider monkey in there. Victor says it just confirms that it’s impossible to hear anything when the house is filled with screaming pumas. Then he yelled at me about the kitchen being a wreck, but it was easy to tune him out because of all the pumas. Which? Kind of a bonus. Screaming pumas are my new sound track.
P.S. Actual MSNBC quote about W. C. Fields, the escaped spider monkey: “Don’t go outside. Don’t try to pet him. Do not befriend him.” Holy crap. The spider monkey has just become the hero from The Running Man.
You know what’s awesome? When you move into a new (to you) house and you smell something musty in your bathroom, and so you call someone to look at what you really hope isn’t black mold, and they’re all, “Shit, lady. You’re fucked.” And then a scientist comes out to take lab samples and says, “You haven’t been sleeping near this room, have you?” And they seal the whole section of that house off and put a zipper in it so that the mold spores don’t escape into the rest of the house. Then they get dressed up in the exact same outfits that the FBI people wore when they accidentally almost killed E.T., and they rip out Sheetrock and cabinets, and you want to take pictures but they won’t let you in unless you’re dressed in protective gear, and then they’re all, “No, ma’am, feetie pajamas are not going to cut it.” You try to sneak into the bathroom to get your toothpaste, but you trip over the opening, because it’s almost impossible to walk into a room that has a zipper for a door, and when you fall it hurts so much that you forget that you aren’t supposed to breathe, and so you take a breath of what will probably kill you. Then you start to feel sick, but you remind yourself that you’ve been showering in that room for months, so you probably already have tuberculosis anyway, and you’re not going to have enough money for hospitalization, because you’re spending all your money on air samples, and lab techs, and supporting the people who probably killed E.T. And then you go lie down and cry for a minute, and the mold guys are all, “You know, you really shouldn’t use this room.”
Yeah. That’s awesome.
P.S. By “awesome” I mean, “I’d like to go hide under the house but I suspect that’s where all the scorpions are living now that the chupacabras have taken over the attic.” Also, yes, of course I have pictures:
It’s like living in a camping tent—if the tent were filled with spores that could kill you.
This is what the mold guys look like when you sneak up on them. Also, they might hit you with a board. But not on purpose. Just reflexes, probably.
“I just killed your alien and stuffed him in this bag. I’ll leave you alone with him so you can cry and bring him back to life. Also I just ruined E.T. for you. Spoiler alert.”
Eventually they fixed everything and I was very relieved, until they told me that when they cut a hole in the wall a bunch of dead scorpions fell out. I’m never going to sleep again. Probably because of the combination of fear, concussion, and tuberculosis.