the real monster house

After high school I used to live in a house with two friends and fellow bachelors Kevin and Lee. It was a small (about 900 square feet) house, and was in generally poor condition. This is a pic of me standing by the front door (notice the paint and dirt? Well it only got worse)As you can imagine with three guys living there just out of high school, well, let’s just say that when it came to dirty clothes, dirty dishes, and general cleanliness; the standard of hygiene was not quite what it should have been. In fact it was downright nasty. We had rats, slugs and mice. All cozily nesting I’m sure in the mounds of dirty laundry heaped about the house, and eating, quite well might I add, from the left over food on unwashed plates also located (conveniently enough for the critters), in strategic locations throughout the place.

How did we know we had slugs? Well it just so happens that we came home one day and on the front porch there was a slivery trail leading from the front door into the house and onto a plate of food that had been left in the living room floor. My friend Lee, obviously an expert in such matters, nodded sagely and deduced that it was indeed the trail of a slug and proceeded to track, not entirely in form unlike a Mohawk Indian, which greatly impressed Kevin and I, the slug. “Hmm,” he said. “It came into the house and into the living room and ate some of the food from this plate but that’s where the trail ends. I wonder where he went from there?” Now there was still some moldy food on the plate about the size of a small egg. We figured that maybe we should clean off the plate, you know, to prevent future occurrences of slugs. After all we weren’t completely uncivilized. So Lee, being the resident expert, had picked up the plate and went into the kitchen, when we heard a very unman-like scream. Kevin and I both rushed in to see what was the matter and found Lee dancing around like a little girl and OH MY GOD it seems as thought the egg sized piece of food left over on the plate wasn’t food at all, unless that is you eat escargot, because that was the biggest damn slug I had or have since ever seen in my entire life. Kevin and I joined Lee in the little girl dance until we composed ourselves enough to scoop up the thing into an old paper cup (conveniently located nearby) and carry it outside. We vowed never to tell anybody about the slug or that we had done the little girl dance. And we never have.

How did we know we had rats? Well if you’ll notice in the picture of Kevin, sitting with his head on Kevin’s lap is a little Boston terrier named Bullet. It just so happens that I was sleeping in one day, laying face down on the couch, the one that Lee is sitting on in the picture, (I slept on the couch)when Bullet jumps up and lays down by my feet for the warmth. Bullet always does this when he thinks it’s time for me to get up, although it’s usually later in the day before he feels the need to do so. Anyway following the usual ritual I pin him down on the couch with my feet, he nips at them and he wrestles around with my feet until I finally get up. Well I notice Bullet is being unusually rough this morning. So in order to get myself where I can turn around onto my back and see what the deal with Bullet is I put my hand down on the floor….and onto Bullet. Still being groggy, it takes a couple of seconds to register, in my sleep fogged mind, that Bullet can’t be in two places at one time and that we only have one Bullet. It also hasn’t occurred to me that I should be panicking at this time. “Well then,” I think, “If that’s not Bullet then what is it?” Now you know those moments when you’re half way between sleep and consciousness when all of a sudden you remember something you were supposed to be up doing, or that you’re late for a meeting, or that something is happening that requires your immediate attention, and you get that little shot of adrenaline to your heart and jump up and are immediately awake? Yeah, well that’s what happened. I looked down, and still pinned under my feet was the biggest, ugliest, red-eyed RAT that I had ever seen. I screamed like a girl. Kevin and Lee came running in to the living room and when they see my situation, decide that the wisest course of action is to harmonize with me in screaming. Well, I thought that they had panicked but in reality they knew what they were doing because the sound of all three of us guys screaming made the rat run away, and they laughed at me for screaming like a little girl. Miraculously I was not bitten once. We all vowed to never tell anyone about the rat incident and about us screaming like little girls. And we never have.

Ok I have to go get ready for work now and rub my wife’s shoulders because she has a headache. I’ll be where I have access to a computer at work so I’ll finish posting about how we knew we had mice, reply to ya'lls comments, and then comment on ya’lls posts later on today.

Later Love (I stole that from Scott)