vituperation

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words and emails regarding the gray kitty in the last entry; they were appreciated.

The vet bill wasn’t too bad, less than I’d authorized, but you know what sort of chafes me? They charged me 40 bucks to vaccinate the cat against feline leukemia, because their policy is not to treat any cats that haven’t been vaccinated against it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for vaccinations, but damn. They could’ve at least waited to see if they were going to be able to stabilize him.

I knelt at the dark opening, alternating my gaze between the skeleton of a mouse and a deer tick busy trundling around in the dirt. Cool air streamed from the opening and chilled the sweat running down my face. It smelled faintly of dirt, age, and long-dead mold. In front of me, beyond the industrious tick, a pile of old bricks sat in a heap piled almost to the joists overhead. Next to the bricks I could see the cinderblock wall and cement cap that marked the well. A single block was missing from the wall to allow pipes through; a black hole in the gray concrete leading to flat black water deep in the earth.

Wells creep me out.

A grunt from deep under the house drew my attention. The home inspector was back in there, wriggling around amongst the creepies on the black plastic ground cover on the far side of the house. A far braver man than I. For now, anyway. With my love of surround sound, I know my day in the nether regions of the crawlspace are coming, because the spot where the wires will need to go is at the exact opposite corner of the house from the entry. Probably I should up my life insurance before doing it, so when a spider drops onto my head and I either have a heart attack or crack my skull from leaping into the subfloor headfirst, Robyn and the spud will be taken care of.

“There’s not full ground cover back here,” the home inspector called.

If you don’t know — and don’t feel bad if you don’t, because I didn’t — homes on a crawlspace are supposed to have the bare ground underneath completely covered. It helps prevent moisture from getting under your house which is a good thing. Moisture leads to insects, mold, and rot. Generally, ground cover is nothing more than large sheets of black plastic (or polyethylene, to be more precise).

Another grunt, followed by the sounds of a heavy man sliding around on the ground. The home inspector wriggled back into view, covered in dust from head to toe. The deer tick pulled its legs in and froze. The mouse skeleton did nothing. I picked up a twig and bothered at the tick until it climbed on.

“I found a deer tick,” I said. “And a mouse skeleton.”

Hello. My name is Fred, and I’m a dork.

“Told you,” the home inspector said. “I find all kinds of skeletons under houses. Mice, rats, skunks…even a coyote once.”

I pondered the sort of stink a dead coyote in a crawlspace might make. The home inspector crawled out from under the house. His face was so flushed I wondered if we might need paramedics, but he popped right up and replaced the access cover.

“That tick reminds me,” he told me. “When you’re ready to bush hog the fields, make sure you take a DEET shower first or you’ll get eaten alive. All sorts of things out there in the grass.”

He then segued into a story about how he once ran over a baby deer with his bush hog, but I’ll spare you the details.

“So what’s the word?” I asked. Time for the moment of truth. So far, almost every problem with the house was cosmetic and fairly easily fixed with a little love and a little time. And maybe a little money. “Any major problems?”

“Not a one. In fact, the structure’s in damn good shape to be seventy-one years old. All the footings are sound, the mortar’s still good, and all your beams are fine. No rot. There’s a little mold because of the missing ground cover, but you can take care of that with some Orthicine or bleach. You need to call Cook’s or some other pest service to have the ground cover installed. The structure is fine.”

“Excellent. What about the front room floor?”

One thing we noticed in the front room is a small area, roughly a circle with a 2-3 foot diameter around one of the A/C vents, where the hardwood planks have separated from the subfloor. There’s a small buckle near the center of the spot, and a general softness because of the separation. When I asked the current owner about it, she didn’t know what it was but said it happened shortly after the A/C was installed.

“One of the ducts needs more insulation, and probably you want to put some insulation on the subfloor above it. The floor’s getting cold from the cool in the duct, and water’s condensing there. It’s not rotting, but that’s what causes the buckle. Just put some insulation in and it’ll be fine. A flooring place will know someone who can fix the separation. Most likely they’ll just come from underneath and put some screws in.”

“And the hallway?”

The downstairs hallway has a slight tilt to it. Not much—just enough to add more of that character we love so much. Still, unleveled floors can be indicative of problems underneath.

“Part of one of the support beams has been spliced, and that probably caused a little bit of sag in the middle. Noithing bad, and the house isn’t about to collapse. It wouldn’t hurt to have someone come out at some point and put a pier (?) under it for support so it doesn’t sag any more. Even if you do nothing at all it might not sag any more. Just don’t have someone come out here and jack up your house. That could cause problems.”

We continued the inspection. He found several small things, some of which I’ll ask the current owners to fix, some of which I’ll fix myself. All in all, the inspection went very well, and it was made even better when he told me that the house would easily sell for double what we’re paying if it were in Decatur, sitting on one of the less-than-a-quarter-acre lots in old town. That tells me that if we find we hate it in Smallville, selling it shouldn’t be a problem.

And that rocks.

The whole time the exterior portion of the home inspection was going on, Dixie the watchcat followed us around, looking for attention. Matter of fact, she’s why I was crouched at the entry to the crawlspace instead of crawling in with the inspector. Someone had to stay behind and make sure the cat didn’t get in, so I grudgingly agreed to stay back even though I really wanted to crawl into the scariest place in existence.

No, really. I did.

When we first met Dixie, the owners told us she was there to keep mice around the house to a minimum. She’d just had kittens, they said, but they didn’t know where the litter was. While the inspector was up on the roof doing his thing, I decided to go hunting.

And look what I found in the garage, hidden away in a corner:

Eight little bitty kitties (one’s buried in the pile).
Their eyes aren’t even opened yet. Also, there was a squirrel tail just off to the side.
I guess mom’s been getting some good eats.

I just tried to call Robyn at home to talk about our trip to the new house tomorrow morning, but she didn’t answer. So I hung up, and promptly called my own cell phone instead of hers.

When it rang (from my pocket) at the exact same time I heard the call on the other end connect and ring, I was all, like, Damn, who’s calling me? and trying to juggle both phones, hoping that Robyn wouldn’t answer while I was taking the incoming call.

Hello. My name is Fred, and I’m a dumbass.