Today Is Cappy’s Birthday!

As everyone knows, I do not take part in the ridiculous celebration and mundane acknowledgement of birthdays; however, today is Cap’s special day and she is special to me, so I wish her well in whatever she decides to do in marking a year in passing.

On a lighter note, I have yet to decide what to become when I grow up and Spanky’s car is in the shop. Dad couldn’t get her on her cell, so naturally, he called Spanky’s corporate headquarters. When she came back from a bathroom break she found a sticky on her monitor: CALL YOUR DAD.

Yesterday, after screaming over my shoulder at Claire to quit thrashing around the the family room, I realized there was an opossum loose in my house. I then armed Claire with a broom and ordered that she flush the ferocious vermon from behind the couch.

Claire: And then what?

Me: [in a huffy whisper as to not let the creature know we were in the room] SHHHHHHH! He can hear you!

[Insert the sound of claws against my hardwood floor.]

Claire: AHHHHHHH!

Me: Damnit! He can hear you!!!!!! Quit making all that noise or he’ll know exactly what direction to plan his attack. He’s in this for the kill. I can tell.

I grabbed the cat, Emily, and tossed her behind the couch to ensure a thorough opossum flushing.

Emily swaggered to the left. Froze. Then sauntered to the right, dropped to her back, and executed a back roll under the couch to show off for her new friend. I expected a more advanced approach from an animal who spends her mornings hissing at the fish tank.

As it turned out, the opossum was a squirrel, small enough to squeeze through a radiator pipe space in the floor and make its way into the basement.

Don’t start on me about having a squirrel in my basement. I grew up in a house populated with bats, wolf spiders, and snakes. Yes, snakes. I will forever recall the evening I was watching television with my mom and Spank, only to witness a large black snake emerge from between the bricks on the wall and slither along the baseboard heating component. 

I was in second grade when I pulled a puppet out of the toy box to find it filled with eight baby snakes. Momma reptile had found a perfect place to hatch a crew of six-inch offspring.

And we all know the bat sagas, as they continue to reach new heights. Like this summer, when I was accostedby a bat in my bedroom while sleeping over at Spank’s.  I slowly crawled out of bed, a stealth maneuver, and tip-toed to Spanky’s bedroom doorway.

Me: [standing quietly, planning my approach to waking Spank]

Spank: WHAT.

Me: [now startled] There’s a bat in my room.

Spank: Where.

Me: Between the floor boards.

Spank: What?

Me: I heard it scrambling around in the wall and now it’s floundering back and forth between the floor boards.

Spank: Are you asking me to remove a bat from inside the floor?

Me: Yes.

Spank: Get out of my room. Now.

I, still in stealth mode and humming the “Mission Impossible” theme in my head, slithered across the hall and climbed back into bed with Hazel and Andy. I laid there for another 30 minutes and listened to the bat slam around inside the floor. I assessed that Edgar Allen Poe, too, had experienced something similar to the insanity ensuing beneath my wooden floor boards.

Finally, the bat located the ever-handy radiator pipe entrance hole that houses  hot water pipes running from the basement furnace throughout the house.

Me: Andy!

Andy: [garbled snore]

Me: Andywakeup!!!!

Bat: [sound of bat appendages scraping against aluminum radiator parts]

Me: [covers over head] ANDYGETUP!!

Andy: [muffled snoring noises]

Hazel: [sitting up in bed between Andy and I]  What’s going on?

Me: There’s a bat in the heater. Get down. I’m going to get Aunt Jess.

I army-rolled across the floor, slithered across the hall, and addressed Spank.

Me: I really need you this time.

Spank: Are you kidding? Because you must be kidding me if you think I can get a bat out of the floor. How exactly do you think…..

Me: It’s in the heater now.

Spank: Jesus.

Me: I’m serious. It’s going to get me.

Spank: There’s nothing I can do. Go back to bed.

I returned to bed.

Bat: [continued body parts on metal noises erupting from the heater between the wall and the bed]

Hazel: [from under the covers] Can I come out yet?

Me: Aunt Jess won’t help us.

Bat: [THUNK. flapflap. THUNK. flapflapflapflap. THUNK.]

Me: OMYGOSH. ITSUNDERTHEBED. ANDEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! The bat is UNDER. THE. BED.

Bat: [THUNKflapTHUNKflapTHUNKflapTHUNK]

Andy: What in the…?

Me: Go get Jess. There’ s a bat under the bed.

Andy, who had been sleeping in the spot against the wall, climbed over Hazel and me, not hearing the bat and not really caring about much of anything other than the anger ensuing over the wake-up call, walked to the darkened doorway of Spank’s bedroom.

Andy: Um…..eh-hem….I don’t mean to bother you….but….uh…

Spank: Why do I feel like you are standing in my bedroom wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts?

Andy: [scanning the dark room] Do you have a tennis racket in here?

Spank: Please tell me you are at least wearing a t-shirt.

Andy: Sara thinks there’s a bat in our room and….

Spank crawled out of bed, armed herself with a racket and handed one to Andy. They clumsily returned to my room, where I was naturally dying a slow death due in part to the lack of oxygen I was sharing with Hazel under the bed covers. Spank turned on the bedroom light.

Andy: See, I knew there was nothing in here. She’s hearing things. I’m really sorry that I got you out of bed.

Spank: God damnit. I can’ t believe you. It’s always something with you. [to Andy] She claimed it was in the floor earlier.

Andy: [to Spank] Yeah, I know.. [chuckle] I ignored her the first two times she tried to get me up. I should have kept going with it.

I don’t know exactly how it went down. I don’t have accurate details because it happened in a flash. But it also happened in a freeze-frame motion that chiseled in my memory the image of a bat’s silhouetted wingspan against the backdrop of Spank’s white t-shirt.

Andy took a swing. Missed. Spank hollered encouragement. Then an order to get out of her way. This one was hers.

Rackets swooshed through the air. Grunts of great effort released with every swing until I felt a pelt to the back of my head, still buried beneath a quilt.

Silence.

Spank: Um….

Andy: Sara, don’t move.

Spank: Um…we should have moved them first.

Andy: We are never going to find it in those blankets.

But they did. And they tossed the departed into the front yard where the cats probably ate it.

So don’t give me shit on the squirrel in my basement. Unless you can produce a statistical analysis report on the number of squirrel-related deaths in Philadelphia. Because I know you want to warn me of the plague-like diseases squirrels spread to small children.

And I don’t need the crap about how squirrels chew on things. I know how they chew because I have to call Comcast Cable every six months because the squirrels living in my backyard tree regularly chew through my cable lines.

My basement is comprised of boxes sealed almost a decade ago and representing a life from which I was stripped. And later cleansed. If the presence of a squirrel in my house means that those boxes will be chewed and soiled and ultimately destroyed. Well then, so be it. It is most likely high time that I get on with my life and quit thinking that it exists in brown packing boxes whose contents have long since disintegrated from memory.

As for Andy’s multimillion dollar tool bench, work area, surf boards, and multitude of electrical equipment? That’s on him.

Payback for issuing fake snoring noises during a time of genuine crisis.