You're Hired! (Where Are You Going?)

I'm taking it as a point of pride that my small, modestly appointed home is so filled with love and laughter that one of God's special creatures has seen fit to crawl under my kitchen and die.

There were a couple days of "do you smell something?"  And a day or two of "give it an hour -- I just cleaned out the fridge / rinsed out the garbage can".  And a weird afternoon of "I think the neighbor is curing meat," before it became clear what was really going on.

But it was super cold for a while, so everything seemed manageable.  It was probably a mouse or something.  One day it was less noticeable than the day before, we lit some candles and scattered some coffee filter packs around and it seemed like it was going to be okay.  And then we had a couple of those springlike 45 degree days that everyone loves so much and it became clear that this thing was just getting started.  AND it might be a horse.

Upon the smell reaching its new, lethal caliber, we decided we needed a professional, and we had a brief conversation about how much we were willing to spend.  Relieved that we were moving forward with a plan, we took a deep breath of relief... and then increased what we were willing to spend by 40%.

Typing the phrase "dead animal removal" into Google maps yields only a few options.  I called one and got a woman who answered the phone with a phrase which I didn't understand even after I asked her to repeat it.  But I was only prepared to have the one conversation, so I told her about the dead thing.  Luckily, it was the answering service for the wildlife control guys, so the mention of a rotting animal wasn't as far afield as it might have been had I dialed, let's say, an oral surgeon or a bakery.

When the guy returned my call, it was with conspicuously muted enthusiasm. He answered my request with little more than "blech."

And dummy that I am, I took that as a good sign. "Blech" is exactly the right response. "Blech" means that there had been no misunderstanding whatsoever.  And it's comforting, when you're up against something unfamiliar going on in your home, to know that the confident professional that you're bringing into your world is going to just go all Mike Rowe on your situation.

Then he asked, "What kind of animal is it?"

And... dead. "Dead" covers it, right?  How much variation could there be between the strategies to remove either a hamster or a mountain lion once they're dead?

"How long have you smelled it?"

"A few days"

"Is it in a basement?"

"No.  It's a crawlspace."

"Ugh.  How tall is the crawlspace?"

"Maybe two feet."

(Long, long exhale into the phone)

He asked me where I was, and the answer cheered him up considerably. "Aw, buddy," he said, "I'm like sixty miles from you.  Let me get you the number of a guy who's closer."

"Cool.  Fine.  Thanks for your help."  I took the number and let the guy get back to whatever it was he did when he wasn't cringing from his chosen field.

The next guy was driving when he answered the phone.  His questions and responses were so similar to the first guy, that I began to wonder if the dead animal was a groundhog.

This guy said he would be in the area in a few hours and I gave him my wife's number, because I had to get back to work.  Nothing to do now but busy myself and wait for the gruesome details.

The news my wife eventually gave me was confounding.

• He'd shown up, sniffed my dining room and said it smelled like a mouse.  It would take about three weeks for a mouse to stop smelling.
• He saw the hatch for the crawlspace, and said he wasn't going to open it.
• He suggested it would be easier to tear up the floor.
• He recommended that I squeeze MYself through the hatch, crawl around under the house, locate and identify the dead thing and give him a call.  He'd come and get it then.

I'm fully sympathetic to the idea that there is nothing to be enjoyed about the task at hand.  In fact, if I met someone who was enthusiastic about doing this, I wouldn't trust him.

But, somewhere in this guy's head, he must understand that if I had any interest in doing this myself, I wouldn't have called him.  The thing he wanted me to do was the clear majority of the task I was trying to pay him, or anybody, to do.

I'm not saying that this is the job he deserves, I'm not saying that I'm too good to do it myself.  What I'm saying is that if everybody in southwestern Pennsylvania were to, at this very moment, use every available resource to find someone to remove a dead, smelly animal, my phone would not ring even once.

And that...is not...an accident.

This most recent bout of warm weather has been reassuring.  The smell is abating, although not quickly enough.  I hallucinate the smell randomly while I'm at work.  That'll probably stop, right?

Without going into any detail, I've done something in the course of my professional life which was, no joke, horrifying.  The gift of that experience was perspective.  If you can electively bring yourself to endure, without complaining, an hour of nightmarish proportions, little stuff will probably not bother you.  It's nice.

Although, clearly, my enlightenment stops short of me crawling around under my kitchen on my day off.  

Oh, hey.  There's a misprint on your business card.  The one you gave me says "Dead Animal Removal".