Rats and Snakes Oh My

So the roof of the spare room has fallen in due to a nest of rats in the ceiling. Not the roof, but the drop ceiling section. Tiles, specifically. The room is a disaster area.

There is so much rat feces on the floor it looks like a negative-photo of a hall's floor after a wedding reception - black rice covering everything.

But my dad thinks it's fine.

There are rats in the ceiling above his head, shitting and pissing in the tiles. I removed one in his bedroom, which adjoins the spare room, and it is covered with large rat and mice turds.

But my dad thinks it's fine.

What am I going to fucking do?? If I get forceful he threatens to kick me out. I'm currently unemployed and my dad thinks I'm on vacation here (even though I've stressed the gravity of my situation many times), he seems to think it's hilarious to threaten to kick me out if I argue with him. So I clean "around the edges".

But the rats and mice have taken this to another level.

So the ceiling caved in. Two tiles. My dad goes and buys two tiles to replace them - not two cases, so I can do both ceilings in his bedroom and the spare room, but two tiles.

So I'm cleaning the rat shit, empty boxes, tupperware, stuffed animals, glassware, old tools and piss/shit covered junk in the spare room (can't throw any of it out, of course, he has to have it), and I turn  around and the dresser I was piling glassware and tupperware (clean) onto now has a rubber snake.

Ok, this is at elbow's length away. We use rubber snakes to sometimes scare birds away on the dock. I turned away, continued to clean whatever the hell I was working on, and turn back, and the rubber snake has changed position. Two things dawn on me at once.

1) I didn't put no fucking rubber snake on that dresser 30 seconds ago.

2) The dresser is directly under the missing ceiling tile.

Put that together.

I look back, closely, at the snake. It's a foot or two long, brown with stripes, and in  the shadows I can't see it very well. Triangular head. We live next to a salt marsh and see all manner of wildlife, so I knew this was likely a cottonmouth or water moccassin. I wasn't taking chances. And I knew I had to kill it before it got off the dresser and into the maze and mess of boxes, pieces of hoarded crap and everything in the spare room or I'd never find it and it would be lose in the house.

I darted to the kitchen and got the best thing I could find - an old broom. I didn't want to go further because I was afraid it would leave and hide somewhere (we have guns and much better snake killing things, of course). I figured the broom would be enough.

I go back in, the snake is still there, frozen in position. So I wail it with the broom. The plastic head of the 20 year old broom shatters into a million pieces, the tupperware flies all over the room, the glassware under the tupperware shatters, glass and plastic are bouncing off the walls, the pictures hanging on the wall next to the dresser fall off the wall onto the top of the dresser (breaking the glass), the snake is writhing under what is left of my broom. BUT I have him pinned down on top of all the shattered crap on top of the dresser.

I hit him hard so I figured he might be dead, but he's still moving - not unusual for a reptile in death throes, so I decide to wait him out, pinning him down until he's dead. But he just keeps getting stronger. Clearly I had not delivered a killing blow.

So now he's biting at t he stub of the broom, coiling up the handle toward me, trying like crazy to get out of the little piece of wood and plastic left on the end of the shattered and cracked broom that is pinning him down. He's getting more active all the time. I can't let him up, can't move away or he'll escape into the mess around me so I start looking for a weapon.

Stuffed animal. Empty box. Piece of tupperware. Bag of mardi gras beads. Bag of green plastic easter grass. Empty box. Magazine.Paper. Empty box. Piece of a lid. Part of a picture frame. Empty box. Then I spot it  - an old car battery charger on the shelf barely with my reach. I get it by the plastic handle. Then things got medieval.

I nailed the snake and the top of the dresser hard enough for all the broken glass, snake, picture frames, smashed dishes, and broken tupperware to jump in the air. The snake is still wriggling (or I thought it was) so I got it against the wall and wailed on it again. This time the guts of the charger came out of the bottom. So now I've got this steampunk flail, transformer and broken circuit board connected with wires, and I flail the living shit out of the dresser, the wall, the carpet, everywhere the snake was going.

At some point the snake stopped moving.

Then I went and got my coffee and went about the rest of the day.

Dad? When he saw it he said "it doesn't eat much".

Just another day in Rat Mansion.

Oh, and to make it worse, after  I got light on it I see it's just a poor innocent corn snake. Damn. Sorry snake! If I'da known that I would'a just grabbed you and tossed you in the yard. It was dark, I wasn't taking chances.  I'll try to make up for it in my next snake encounter (they happen all the time).

No one hears like my Dad

So I go down to the Chase bank (a terrible company, one that should be fined out of existence for their malfeasance in lending and repossessing during the last depression). Had a tire go out. Got to the bank, then decided I'd call my dad to come down and pick me (and the tire) up so we could go to a store for a new tire.

Three hours later I'm still in the parking lot. My dad is orbiting the area, trying to 1) find the right Publix supermarket used for a landmark or 2) forgetting what he was in the car for. We exchange several phone calls, but it is pointless since he can't hear, and can not understand words spoken through the cell phone he has. So many calls, just to try and tell him its 4 MILES SOUTH he has to go. That's it. Over and over and over and over. Eventually my phone is going dead, and I tell him to go home and he says ok (which he says to everything when he doesn't understand what you are saying, or hear you). I call a cab. While waiting for the cab, he shows up in the parking lot.

Pulled the tire, went and got a new, and I'm off and running after another hour, but at least I'm in control.

The hearing aid issue and his cell phone is going to end up killing him one day, and he won't give it to someone else to relay the message. Lesson learned. I will call a cab first next time I'm stranded a few miles from home. Fuck it.

Now I really need a beer.

New tactic on the dock

My father has only so many years left, at 90, and sometimes he gets impatient. So today he got impatient with messing around with the enormous deck plate he wanted to use for the gangplank on the broken dock. Instead, he modified a couple of 12x6's and had me attach them to the concrete landing. Done. Then he began to hammer on bits of broken wood - after he almost pitched himself into the drink the other day when he stumbled on the shore by the landing. The boards in, I finally had to ask him what the heck kind of death trap he was building. Wiggly and unstable, held together by nails, it looked like a death trap waiting to happen. So I took the situation in hand, measured a third plank, screwed two boards on it, removed the three boards he'd hammered into the new assembly (under his sour gaze), and placed the third plank between the two and screwed them all together. In the next twenty minutes I had half the gangplank screwed together before the driver ran out of juice (19.2v Craftsman).

Tomorrow, I hope  to finish it. Then he can go out on the busted up dock and we'll see what happens.

A Typical Day Caring for the Elderly

So here's the day.

I get up, begin research on some sports administration articles I'm writing on contract. These are rather complex, and while I'm buried in "the Google" the phone rings. It's my dad's date for the night. The next twenty minutes are spent arranging their hook up for later (he can't hear on the phone and her phone makes an odd ring/aftertone in the handset I'm using that makes it difficult for me to hear what she is saying).

So that's done. Then I decide to make coffee and I see the microwave. Hmm. Guess it's time to make the rounds with my squeeze bottle of disinfectant and paper towels. Twenty minutes on the microwave (I've never seen him put eggs in there but eggs were on the inside, and more). Ten minutes in other areas of the kitchen. Dishes - done. Bathroom wipe duty - completed. Then a quick trip to the yard to make sure he's not overworking himself (not that I could stop him if I wanted to).

I just got a call from my dad's girl friend. It's his third over the years since my mom passed. Arranged a meeting with the two of them at a restaurant later tonight. Looks like my dad is more popular than me with the ladies.

Looked through the mail. It appears I have been asked to pay a fine for prematurely vacating my last apartment. There should be a low to protect the unemployed from this kind of contractual obligation when it concerns housing. Let's figure this out. If I was making enough money to pay the rent plus utilities plus food plus insurance for my vehicle (so I can go to job interviews) I'd still be there. But as many of the long termed unemployed discover, you can't make a payment on any of those things and you are well and truly SCREWED. So, that explains my reason for leaving my old apartment prior t o the expiration of the lease (and the narrow time slot they allow you to inform them you are vacating). It's not that I had nefarious plans to profit in some way, of course. But now they heap yet another piece of crap on my shoulders, and want $1453 to shut them up. I arranged to make payments out of my pittance I'm currently earning through freelance work. Want a professional writer? Contact me. I must work remotely, for reasons that, if you've read this blog you will understand. Just send me an email if you're interested in hiring the best creative talent you can find.

Nothing smells worse than my dad

It's a nice day today so my dad is out working on the deck plate he still wants to use as a gangway to connect to the floating dock. It's a nice day, about 70 degrees or so, and perfect for working in the back yard in the sun. Naturally, this makes you sweat.

If you've never smelled a sweaty old man, I have to tell you, it's quite the experience. It reminds me a mostly of a wet dog, with traces of vomit and dog shit. I'd rather smell a cat litter box. I'd rather smell a wet dog. I'd rather smell low tide at the docks where the shrimp boats gather. I can not adequately  convey this odor. It must be experienced.

My dad's not dirty. He takes a shower in the morning. His clothes appear to be clean (he does laundry and I check them on occasion just to make sure they are free of odor, etc., and they are). It's just this FREAKING MIASMA that hangs about him when he's sweating like this, that I have never quite experienced. It's something totally different and it is highly nauseating. This is the second time I've smelled it, and was able to ascertain for certain its source.

Not sure why this odor is so bad (I've experienced lots of odors tramping around swamps, woods, derelict building, hobo camps, shelters, etc.) and I can only wonder what the true source of this odor is. He does eat an awful lot of bad food - meat, canned goods, restaurant food. He rarely, if ever, eats fresh fruit or vegetables. Perhaps this is the root cause. Or maybe it's something else.

The police have finished digging in the bank by the dock and we are free to put the freaking dock in. They've found nothing worth a real clue about the bones, just something that washed up and got buried over the years. Wonderful.  Now I can't wait until my dad's ready to try and move the damned dock into place.