What?

Excuses are over.  Time to hit the keyboard and get on with our ongoing adventure.  For those of you who have picked on me for slacking off these past few months, you now have to endure more of my fractured sentences, misspelled words, and a lame joke or two.  Always be careful what you ask for, I say.

As I left you last, we had safely returned from our winter sojourn and parked the coach in our home away from home ... South Haven, Michigan.  We said a few quick hellos and headed off to our 'other' home on the east side of the state.  We chatted along the way about the last time we were away discovering a flooded home due to a water line breakage when we walked into the soggy house.  We were pretty confident that was all behind us as we pulled into the driveway.  All looked good and I opened the back door. At first glance everything was as we had left it six months ago.  Sharon followed me in and said "it looks great! ... but what's that smell?".  I cleverly noted that 'we'd been away for sometime and you should expect some strange smells'.  We continued looking around and all appeared fine so I decided to go to the basement and turn on the water valve.  Opening the basement door was a mistake.  As I did, the smell overwhelmed me.  With racing pulse I ventured down, turning on the lights as I proceeded.  I hadn't quite reached the bottom of the stairs and knew we had a serious problem.

As I looked into the main room of our finished basement, I saw almost every suspended ceiling tile was sagging and moisture laden with animal feces.  Various large puncture holes were visible in several of the tiles and pink insulation was scatter everywhere on the carpet below.  The stench was formidable and the flies.  Did I mention the flies.  They were buzzing around everywhere.  I peeked into one of the other rooms and found most of the ceiling tiles on the floor, soaked very stinky.  A normally screwed tight access panel door lay under the rubble.  This was the access panel that led to a crawl space which is under our family room.  The very place the little bastards managed to get into the house. 

Now I'm not the cowardly lion type but what came to mind was what did this damage? ... and most importantly was it still in the house! So without further ado, I backed out the basement making sure the door was again securely closed behind me.  What ever had made a winter home in our basement had not found a way to get upstairs and ruin any of the work we had completed but six months ago.  This was a good thing.

So, after calming Sharon down a little, we made the call to our insurance agent to break the news that we had a problem.  His first question was ... what was it that caused the damage?  I said I had no idea but then said you'd better hope it was not a rodent of some kind, as rodent damage was not covered in home owners policy.  As the big lump in my throat swelled, I manage to ask him what do I do next.  He said you'll need to get somebody over to see if the animal(s) were still in the house and determine what kind of critters they were. 

We contacted a local critter control guy and he made a quick dash to the house.  He walked in the back door and said he didn't need to go any further to determine what kind of creature had paid us a visit.  "Raccoon" he said.  "Been in business for 20 years and I know what raccoon s##t smells like".  I'm thinking to myself  'now that's a skill set anybody would be proud to put on their resume'.  Anyway he toured the 'crime' scene, placed some bait and traps around and said he'd be back in a day or so to see what was caught.  The catastrophic clean-up crew said they wouldn't start until I could assure them there were no more critters on the premise so getting these little bandits out was paramount. 

The following day the critter guy stopped by and found three furry little critters in the traps and declared the house was free at last ... free at last ... then drove off down the road.  After waving goodbye I walked around to the side of the house only to find a family of furry youngsters checking out the backyard.  More mad than vengeful, I managed to dispatch the lot of them before they scurried off into the woods.  Not overly proud of my actions but a guys got to defend his castle you know..

Anyway the mess was cleaned up, the basement remodeled and all is well.  Finally. 

For those who have followed this blog you may now be wondering if indeed is wasn't Oprah who turned up to spend the winter of 2009 at our place.  Thanks Hal.

Keepin' a watchful eye ...but still livin' the dream.

Phil