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May 22, 2006

Raccoons and Revelations...

I had a nervous breakdown this past weekend. Crying, hysteria, wondering about my “purpose”, sleeping at random hours of the day, needing so badly the JetBlue Munchies snack mix – all kinds of “off” behavior. The kind of nervous breakdown where I couldn’t have been more relieved that I am no longer agreeing to have my life documented for television purposes. Funny, writing about it on the Internet --I don’t mind. You know, because I can just omit all the real, real shit I don’t want you to know and I am safe in knowing that it is brought to you from the only perspective that matters here, which is mine.

I’m feeling better today but honey, goodness gracious almighty, it was an insane weekend.

I know for a fact that the breakdown was only revealed to me as a result of my overreaction to the raccoon situation. Let me explain.

A bit ago, I’d made a small reference to a raccoon problem J and I have been suffering since March 31 of this year. In the process of gutting the basement to make “the ultimate studio, babe” our Jamaican contractors, China and Steve, discovered six raccoon cubs behind some drywall in the pool room that is connected to the ultimate studio. China and Steve, scared to death of raccoons, ran running and screaming from the job site in a most hysterical (and hilarious) manner. China and Steve, you see, are two 275-lb pure Jamaicans that make up their own songs to the melody of Sean Paul’s Temperature as they work eight long hours toiling in the basement of this house. For example, “I got the right drill right here to put this nail in the wall…” Sung, yes, to the melody of that song. With amazing Jamaican accents.

When they are here doing construction, I know that I am living in quite possibly the happiest days of my life. I find reasons to interrupt them because being around them just inspires you to be jovial just because. Coffee, water, questions about Jamaica – I find a way to infiltrate their little world. Interestingly enough, I think they might like me the way I like them. I mean, they heartily laugh at almost everything I say, even if there is no punch line or joke. Which causes me to laugh and so on and so forth. Cultural and language barriers have never been more exciting. Seriously, can you imagine befriending a Jamaican named China and not enjoying the development of that friendship? For real.

With construction of the ultimate studio (which is the very site where J plans to cultivate the ultimate band comprised of our future multicultural babies) at a standstill due to the presence of raccoons, J had to hire a raccoon catcher.

Now, raccoon catching is not an exact science.

When we hired Jake, the slow-moving, slouchy-shouldered, sleepy-eyed jackass raccoon catcher, we really thought that the problem would be solved within the week. It is now deep into May and I am writing this here story and I have so much more to tell so excuse my rambling.

Jake came here with his little traps and assured J that he uses the finest in raccoon-catching technology. Devil Dogs. Chocolate fucking snack cakes, people. Several days went by and J finally said, “Hey um, I don’t mean to step on any toes but why don’t we put the babies in the cage so that when the mother goes to feed them, she’ll be caught…”

Having never heard of such an idea, Jake in pure revelation, agreed to do it J’s way.

The mama raccoon, with her babies, was caught the following day. China and Steve patched up the hole in the drywall and we all moved forward with the ultimate studio.

Not so fast, y’all. Not so fast. The next night J heard some squeaking and grumbling sounds coming from the wall! We could only conclude that the daddy raccoon was still trapped in the wall. The following afternoon, they opened the wall back up and Jake came back here with his stupid Devil Dogs and his stupid trap.

If Jake were an expert raccoon catcher, like the ones I spoke to this past weekend, he’d know that it was not the daddy raccoon after all. Mama raccoons don’t allow daddy raccoons near their babies because they destroy or eat the babies so that the mama will have to hump and get nasty with him all over again. Men, I swear!

Regardless, we didn’t know any of this and it didn’t matter because weeks went by and the trap remained empty. We tried everything. Salmon jerky. Leftover gnocchi. Oranges. China suggested putting coconut in the trap claiming that in Jamaica, raccoons love coconut. As I was opening my mouth to ask if raccoons even lived in Jamaica, J gave me a look and I quickly closed my mouth.

One day Jake stopped by the house to get his traps. J happened to be coming home for lunch early that day and he saw Jake’s truck and then noticed Jake walking out of the backyard with his dumb ass little (empty) traps. The Devil Dogs, by the way, had been eaten by the myriad squirrels and house cats that J would have to rescue from the traps in the middle of the night every night in those terrible weeks.

J approached Jake and asked, “Where are you going with those traps?”

Jake, not surprisingly dumbfounded with his stupid ass, replied, “I need these traps. You should be fine. The raccoon should be gone…”

Unhappy with this response, J sternly reminded Jake that he had already paid him to do whatever it is he needed to do in order to get the raccoons out of here.

Jake had another suggestion at this point. He said he would call upon his friend that had a bear trap that he could borrow. Saying, “You know, it traps his paw.” J is not able to find this as hilarious as it actually is because he is boiling with rage. Originally when J set out to get these raccoons, he was adamant about humane service. He did not want the raccoons harmed in any way. He’s a real animal lover. I thought perhaps that the reason why J was outraged was because Jake was suggesting we hurt the raccoon. No, actually, J is heated because um, well here’s what he said:

A fucking bear trap, bro? So you mean to tell me you want to bring a fucking bear trap and plant it on the side of my fucking house? And when my girlfriend and I are on the fucking streets because I’ve lost everything I’ve ever worked for because this fucking bear trap accidentally killed a neighbor’s dog or cat! Are you fucking insane? How will I explain this to my neighbor when his fucking daughter is dead with her head trapped in a fucking bear trap? What the fuck, man?

Jake, then, actually said that we shouldn’t tell anyone about the bear trap. (!) J cussed him out a little deeper and he finally decided on the following suggestion.

He proceeded to instruct J to put powder on the grounds outside the house where we think the raccoon may have gotten in and if we notice tracks going away from the home, we can be sure the raccoon is gone and we can seal up the holes. The hole on the side of the house where the raccoon may have entered was beneath the roof. Meaning, to seal this hole which is not drywall, we’d need to drill in a large side-of-the-roof shaped piece of wood. Every night, J would blast the headlights of his car into the side yard to check for the tracks. And every night, we were skeptical about the direction, or even the origin, of the tracks. Finally, after several nights of this bullshit, J was confident the raccoon was out for the evening and he enlisted me to help him nail this piece of wood into the underside of the roof.

I was told to hold a flashlight in one hand and aim it at the spots where he’d be drilling and to use my head to hold up the piece of wood. Both of us, crouched down on the side of house in our pajamas using our heads to hold up the heavy piece of wood while he drilled, felt like real assholes at 2 that morning. Dust, wood debris, bugs – all up in my shit – I was furious and J had to try to remain calm while I cussed his ass out. Here, a sample of our conversation while in this predicament:

M: How the fuck do you expect me to hold the flashlight and hold the roof, honey?

J: Woman, just stand right here and hold it up. Please. Seriously, just shut up. Shut up.

M: Woman? I don’t know who you think you are with all this shut up business. Can’t you do this with your friends tomorrow?

J: And let the fucking raccoon back in another night, shitting all in the walls and in the ceiling of the pool room, huh? Is that what you want? You think I want to be here doing this shit! Just shut up. You’re giving me fucking agita over this shit and I’m trying to fix the problem!

M: Well, don’t get that tone with me Mr. Raccoon Hunter. You’re the one that hired that jackass Devil Dogs Bear Trap person. You want to talk about fucking agita…

And on and on like this until the wood was in place.

We put away all the tools and went back in the house to wash up. That night in bed, I kissed him and said I was sorry for being stank (in my signature Craig’s girlfriend from Friday voice). I added that I was really happy this raccoon problem was finally over. He rolled his eyes at me, agreed and went right to sleep.

A couple days went by and I started noticing a funny smell in the stairwell leading to the basement. Every day, I’d tell J that the smell seemed to be getting stronger and stronger. He’d claim he didn’t smell it and I would go insane sniffing around corners trying to figure out exactly where this smell was coming from. I have an intensely strong sense of smell. I had to have gotten it from Shorty. He’d come home from work, smell the kitchen garbage and in a small rage say, “Y’all can’t smell this garbage? All of my children must be out they minds if they don’t smell this garbage. Meleesa! Turn off that damn TV and take this trash out. You ought to be out your damn mind to sit up here smelling this shit…” Begrudgingly, I’d turn off Dance Party USA, take the trash out and go to my room waiting for Shorty’s mini rage to subside. J, now the focus of my baby rages when it comes to my sense of smell, must hear this exact same speech when I walk into the kitchen and smell the garbage.

I stopped dead in my tracks one day on the way up the stairs holding a basket of laundry. The laundry room is off to the side of the studio right before you get to the pool room door. I stopped, got real live goosebumps and thought to myself HOLY SHIT THE RACCOON IS DEAD, ROTTING UP THERE!

I frantically dialed J with my assumption and he told me he couldn’t smell anything, that I was overreacting and that I should just stay away from the basement if I was so scared.

Cut to Thursday last week.

I walk into the house and J calls out to me from the basement. He then runs up the stairs with this face on. His face was looking crazy.

He said, “Babe, don’t go down to the pool room.”

He’s looking at me crazy and now I’m looking at him crazy. Chills travel up and down my spine as he starts to tell the most horrendous story ever.

“I swatted a fly, right. And then I swatted another fly, right. Then, I looked up and holy shit babe, it was a fucking fly infestation!” he said.

I go straight to hysterical tears. Crying loud with goosebumps all over me. I’m scratching my head and neck and chest like a crackhead without a fix just imagining the maggots crawling all over me. In a moment’s time, I’m talking about maggots and infestations and raccoon corpses and rotting feces and all kinds of vermin and disease. It’s a cess pool of disease I tell you.

“I have to Google now, please, just shut up and don’t talk to me…” I screamed and ran to the computer.

J’s like get a grip. I can’t though. I’m crying and imagining all the nasty shit that’s going on right here in this house. Where can I go? Who can I tell? HOLY SHIT.

Google led me to the most disgusting photos of rotting raccoon corpses. I'll spare you the links. Long articles about the biohazard and dangers of rotting raccoon carcasses left behind in crawl spaces. Detailed lists of vermin, disease, health hazards. I cut and paste everything for hours and hours. The next day, I sent J terrible emails about the apocalypse that was going down right here in our house.

J assured me that he was on the phone with as many raccoon carcass experts as he could find and that he’d be finding a solution. He was also getting really mad at me for being dramatic. Like, furious. He had to break it to me that because of the location of the dead raccoon, we might not be able to do anything but “let nature run its course” as he’d been advised.

The pool room is enclosed in all maple wood paneling, all 70s and pretty. The ceiling of the pool room, which is where the raccoon may have traveled from the side of the wall, is made up of this wood with four wide openings for domed skylights. So in the spaces where there is no skylight, there is just vast areas for raccoons to shit and piss and be nasty. Tearing up that ceiling would costs thousands and require us to re-do the walls, the ceilings – all of that. I couldn’t even get to this point in my mind. Wood paneling, financial ruin – couldn’t get there. I was FIXATED on the carcass with the maggots undulating in and out of it.

The raccoon experts J had spoken to had all told him we’d be lucky if we saw ooze and guts where the carcass was so that we’d know exactly where to get the raccoon. This is thick wood lined with insulation. We don’t have any guts to tell us where the raccoon is. Furthermore, the pool would need to be totally drained and then leveled so that we can put a ladder in it and sniff out the spot. To sniff out the spot, we’d have to drill holes all along the ceiling hoping to get to the carcass before we entirely destroyed the woodwork. Or, we can go in through the other way which is on the rooftop but tearing up a roof is not joke either.This is a lot of work. I am still not understanding any of the words coming out of his mouth. Carcass. Maggots. Stench. That’s where I am.

Upon hearing this news, I lost my mind, y’all. I started crying like a crazy person. Reciting (loudly and frantically for all to hear) all the diseases, the vermin, the problems. Raccoon roundworm in the fecal matter causes fatal brain infection! Carpet beetles come and eat the hair, don’t you see! All the infestations that will be coming in the future! I can’t have a small child here! The smell! Once it gets humid and wet out, the smell! I collapsed in a pool of tears, literally pulling out my hair – I CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS! WE CAN’T GO ON!

I’m not even exaggerating. If anything, I’m downplaying how truly disturbed and upset I was over the news that we’d be letting nature run its course.

I cried until 6 pm Saturday evening where I had to get myself together to go to J’s dad 60th birthday dinner. From Friday night to all day Saturday, those tears led me to a bunch of other issues that I was really dealing with. Thankfully, J, Coral, my mom and oddly enough, the accounting department at J's job, were able to talk me through it. I have a lot going on personally, emotionally, with family too, and the raccoon hysteria helped me to unlock it all.

That sounds stupid, I know. But sometimes you start crying over shit that is totally unrelated to the ball of stress you’re actually suffering from. My life is cool and everything, but I have some unresolved insecurity that came out as a result of this ugly ass raccoon.

As for the raccoon, it turns out that the fly infestation was short-lived because it was not the daddy raccoon after all. It was a tiny cub that the mother had managed to migrate to the ceiling the night before we caught her stankin’ ass. She was planning on moving them all to higher ground but didn’t have enough time because J had made the decision to just move the babies into the trap. Nature ran its course and all the flies are gone. We still have to figure out a way to vacuum whatever raccoon shit is up there. And figure out how to get in there to replace the urine-soaked insulation. There’s still a lot of work to be done but that’s J’s job. I have officially retired from the raccoon situation. J says there is no insulation up there but whatever, there is still raccoon doo doo so…

As for me, I’m feeling plenty reassured. Coral said I’m going to be okay. J said he would never let me go on feeling inadequate and insecure. Everybody’s like, “Girl, you’re the bomb why are you tripping why didn’t you say anything you can’t just bottle this up…” which you sometimes need to hear when you’ve gotten so used to disappointment and rejection when it comes to achieving the goals you really want to achieve, professionally and emotionally, you know.

So yeah, I’m fine. I’m still itchy thinking about the maggots but I’m cool. I swear.

Although I am sad about my goldfish Klymaxx dying. Remember the funny smell I kept saying I noticed coming up the stairwell from the basement. J, crazy one that he is, has a gigantic fish tank that he put in the wall on the way to the pool room. Above the fish tank, there are two vents that blow directly up the stairwell. He looked in the tank last night and noticed that Klymaxx (one of my goldfish that originally was supposed to die because she was a starter fish to get the pH in the water right for the other fish that would be coming to the tank) died. She had to have been dead for a minute. I had been so consumed with the raccoon stuff that I hadn’t even looked at that fish tank. Just like with Paco, J’s dog, I have refused to take on any responsibility for his pets. Paco, for those of you that know that saga, now happily lives on two acres of land an hour and a half away in Suffolk County with six kids, a dog and two really loving dog-people adults. J, as much as he loves animals, isn’t exactly the best caretaker. He means well, but he is just too busy to really handle the responsibility. Anyway, we ceremoniously flushed Klymaxx down the toilet and sure enough, there is no more smell.

I’m happy to report that my other goldfish Apollonia, and my level of sanity, are flourishing today.

Posted by melissah at May 22, 2006 06:52 PM