Sometimes You Just Know

It's true.

Sometimes, you can just tell that a call is going to be an adventure:

"DOA ground hog -Back of building, stuck in pipe."

Oh goodness...

I arrive at the back of a small apartment building and find that where the parking lot ends there is a retaining wall down about a foot to the sloping grassy back area. Sticking out of this wall... is a ground hog. You see, there's a drain pipe that went under the parking lot and exited at this wall. There is, however, a small pipe that crosses the larger hole to, as I understand, try and keep animals out.... evidentially quite unsuccessfully mind you.

Something like this:
Anyway, see that little spot between the bar and the bottom of the pipe? That is where the stupid little stinker wedged his head in and died.

An incredibly nice older woman who made the call greeted me, soon followed by the building's superintendent and another building resident. Again, surprised to see me as the one showing up to remedy this situation, we joked about getting paid the 'big bucks' for my job... aka. min wage.

Gloves? -check
Garbage bag? -check
Vicks? (for the smell) -check
Man-Pants? -check

Getting hold of the little guy's shoulders, I give a tug.... zero movement.
<crowd gasps>

Tugging harder, trying to shimmy him out for a few minutes, I make little leeway. The superintendent suggests I lose the garbage bag and just grab him with the gloves for more traction... I say he's more than welcome to give that method a try if he'd like, yet surprisingly he declines.

We laugh and chat, mostly about how I'm supposed to be an elementary school teacher,as the peanut gallery grows slightly. Eventually the older woman needs to catch the bus to work, but sadly comments that she wishes she could see how it all ends... luckily for her the superintendent offers to drive her to work. (New thought: charging admission?)

Progress is slow. Shimmying only works so well... I'm not going to lie, bits of his scalp were coming off... how he got in there in the first place is beyond me. I eventually reach in and try to push him out... meaning I find myself reaching into a hole to push on a dead, bloated ground hog's face in order to unwedge it from being stuck in a pipe.

Seriously, I have no idea how either the ground hog or myself got into that situation.

Yet I can't deny that my day provides me with very unique accomplishments.

After 30-45 minutes of pushing and tugging on the little bugger, when he finally came lose I, along with my newly formed fan club, cheered.

...Oddly enough, thinking this would be the end of my 'interesting' calls for the day, I went directly from this to a woman with a dead goose... stuck on top of her gazebo.

"Yea... I don't really know how you're going to get it off of there"
"Neither do I... but it's gotta be easier than the ground hog I just dealt with..."

A Friendly Reminder...

Today was a bit different. We've been updating our dog licensing and I was calling around to different households to remind them that their dog's license is out of date.

At first I thought that the worst part of this task would be leaving answering machine messages for people. I know everyone thinks that they sound like a moron when they leave messages, but I somehow seem to feel especially stupid.

However...

There are a few main reasons why people haven't renewed their dog's license:

1) They've moved
2) The dog has died
3) They just genuinely forgot

The last option isn't so bad and neither is the first, with the exception of that awkward "...um... no, sorry, I think you have the wrong number" moment.

Yet please note possibility #2.

Therefore, most of what I say seems to go something like this:

"Hello! It's the Humane Society calling. We've been updating our dog licensing and we're calling to check on how Scruffy's doing!
...Oh... just passed away... I'm so sorry to hear that...
...Yes ma'am... I'm sure he was a lovely dog...
...I'm... really sorry to have brought all this up again...
...Did you happen to get another dog by any chance?
...Irreplaceable, yes I ..I understand...
...Ma'am, yes, I'm really sorry for your loss..."

I should just change my message to straight out say

"Hello! It's the Humane Society calling. This is just a friendly reminder about how your dog just died. ..Oh you just got over that? ...Yep, we're rehashing that wound for you all over again! Alright, well you have a good day! Take care!"

Calling old ladies is the worst.

I am a horrible person.

I'm Not Really Sure About How Spellcheck Would Feel About This One...

Pull up to squirrel in the middle of the road.

Intact? Check.

Win.

Seriously, it's an easy pick up... maybe 2 seconds max.

I get out of the vehicle, bag in hand, and am about to grab the little critter when a vehicle approaches. I step back from being half a moment away from very obviously picking up the animal in the middle of the road when...

KKQWURSPLLRDTHH.....

I turn to face the moronic driver, raise my arms in dismay... only to hear...

QRSPLLUDDRRUH...

...

A second car?

seriously?

Thanks.

Well... needless to say... my nice, intact, simple, and easy squirrel was no longer around.

Anyone Up For A BBQ?

I'm taking orders!

Progress!

An additional side note for today:

I bagged another skunk, but all by myself this time! Also, I wasn't even that stinky afterwards.

I realize that this is largely due to the fact that the skunk had managed to bite the big one without rupturing his stink glands (bless his heart), but I, on the other hand, am going to chalk my relatively-stinkless-escape up to my progressing skills.

Now that's what I call talent!

Couldn't You Have Just Buried It?

Now, I know it may sound surprising, but dead things are not always easy to find.

Yes, they are usually splattered across the pavement like one of those grade school projects where you try to drop an egg off the roof and you're supposed to create a parachute but it never really works properly... or was that just me? But then again, sometimes they look like a bowl of red jello scrambled up with bits of fur and then dumped onto the ground... oh, and then there are always those "chip bag" incidents. You know, when you get those mini bags of chips and someone inevitably steps on one left on the ground and pops it. The bag itself still looks relatively intact, but all the chips have shot out one end and exploded across the floor.... Take the same concept and substitute the chip bag with.. oh, I don't know --a bunny.

Anyway, where was I going with this....

Ah yes, sometimes these little critters can hide on you!

Thankfully, today offered me some assistance in locating a dead squirrel. No, it wasn't the smell. True --that usually helps. But you see, depending on how fresh these things are the rancid stench can wain in a strong breeze.

No no, actually... an entire construction crew decided to flag me down.

Arms were frantically waved. Flags were flapped. And in and amungst the whistling and laughing, a collective "THE DEAD SQUIRREL IS OVER HERE!!!" resounded out from the group.

Awesome. Way to be discrete. I don't know if any of you realize how awkward it can be to have an entire crowd of people staring at you while you pick up a dead animal, but apparently I am fascinating. Perhaps I should start charging admission....

I do, however, find myself laughing at the hushed "...yea, it IS a chick" murmers that always seem to carry on. Yes I am a girl. Yes I am picking up dead things. I also loaded up over 100 pounds of donated pet food into my van with a man standing there watching me today. But as far as the death is concerned, seriously guys, I'm just going to pick it up through a garbage bag. Don't you think, as big manly construction workers, that you should be able to do that for yourself?

Something tells me that my expectations might be a bit high. I'm pretty sure chivalry died, rotted, got super maggoty, was scraped off the pavement, and then bagged by me a long time ago.

My Sense of Normal Is Severly Distorted

It was 11 o'clock and all was well.

Two hours on the job and I hadn't touched anything dead yet. I'd brought some animals to the vet and had started to learn how to do some computer task related to dog licensing.

11:30 -A call for a dead squirrel; yet I arrive and it's nowhere to be found.

11:35 -A thought: Oh my goodness. What if this keeps up until noon? Maybe I could actually pass an entire Wednesday morning without touching anything dead. (Not a thought that likely crosses many people's mind mid-work-week, the fact that not touching dead things is abnormal. But then again, I've never really considered my sense of normalcy to be all that common -and this job really hasn't help change that.)

11:45 -A call for a dead opossum; my plan is beginning to deflate. It's okay, I think to myself, maybe if I drive there slowly it'll be after noon, or it'll be missing when I arrive again...

Fat chance.

This opossum made up for the fact that I hadn't touched anything else all morning.

He was fresh. Really fresh. Meaning, the blood is still pretty runny and bright red... then he went and had his head smashed in, so brains were all over the place... gross right? I mean, really gross. True, but oddly its nothing I haven't seen before. It wouldn't have been a problem, but then to top it all off the little bugger went and shat himself.

POO EVERYWHERE

He was double bagged.

I was not impressed.

I got back into my van at 11:58.