Day 2:
My neighbor came over to tell me she’d seen me digging a grave in the meadow yesterday, and thought she’d stop by to see if everything was okay. I was touched, both because she’d come to check on me and also because she’d assumed I was digging a grave but hadn’t called the police. “This,” I thought to myself, “is exactly why I love the country.” She also told me that it was likely that a rattlesnake had bitten Barnaby, as that had happened to two of her dogs. “And this,” I thought to myself, “is exactly why I hate the country.”
I called Victor, who was still out of town for the week. “Barnaby Jones Pickles was actually killed by a rattlesnake. Also, apparently they’re everywhere here, and they all want to kill your dog. I’m never leaving the house again. How do the guns work?” Victor was freaked out about that series of questions, and refused to give me the combination to the gun safe, because apparently he wanted the rattlesnakes to eat Hailey and me. Then he pointed out that rattlesnakes don’t eat people, and that it was just as likely that Barnaby was killed by an allergic reaction from a bee as from a rattlesnake, and that I was probably just fixating on rattlesnakes to keep from having to mourn about Barnaby. Then I hung up on Victor and Googled, “How do I make rattlesnakes leave me alone?”
According to Wikipedia, snakes despise mothballs and will run from them at all costs (which seemed questionable, since snakes don’t have legs). I suspected that Wikipedia had confused snakes with moths, but the mothball remedy was repeated on other sites as well, so I bought six economy-size boxes of mothballs and sprinkled them around the perimeter of the house so thickly that it looked like it had hailed in an incredibly fucked-up pattern. It also smelled as if my house were being surrounded by little old ladies, which was unfortunate, but I visualized that they were vicious old grannies who were all armed with snake-chopping battle-axes, and that made it easier to deal with.
I also called an exterminator, who said the mothballs were a good start, and that he’d bring over a giant can of snake repellent to spray around the perimeter to keep the snakes at bay. I asked, “So how do you make sure that the snake isn’t already hiding inside the perimeter, and will now be trapped in here with me?”
He paused for a second, then replied, “Wow. That’s a good question. How do you know?” And I was like, “This isn’t a quiz. I’m asking you . . . how do you know?” Then he said that if the snake wasn’t already gone, it would be able to pass over the Snake-A-Way just to get far away from the scent. I asked, “So it’s not like when you put a circle of salt around you to keep demons away?” And he was like, “That works?” And then I thought that maybe I needed to find a new exterminator.
I went out to do a second line of mothballs, and that was when I noticed that Barnaby Jones’s grave had been disturbed. The cairn of stones I’d put on his little tomb had been knocked down, and I saw the tiny, horrifying hint of a paw sticking out. For a brief second I was terrified that Barnaby Jones was actually returning from the grave, and I froze, wondering whether I should help dig him out or call an exorcist. But as I watched, an enormous dark bird swooped down and pulled at the leg. I slowly made my way down the hill toward the meadow as a giant horde of raptors shrieked and took off from the tree they were perched in.
Vultures.
I ran to the garage to grab a machete, but every time I would walk away from Barnaby’s grave they would swoop back in. Then I would scream and run at them, waving my machete angrily, and they would take a step back and look at me like I was being ridiculous. “You’ve left us food,” they seemed to be saying. “Please stop trying to whack us in the heads with a machete. It’s bad enough that you’ve buried our snack. Honestly, you’re embarrassing all of us here.”