Real Kato Blog: Not a Mission the Joneses Would Have Liked

Alternate title for this post: "Of Mice and Snakes".

Remember the smoke alarm that went off at 5:30 a.m. the other day? It turns out we had fried a mouse in the auxiliary heating element of our heat pump.

Mmm, burnt mouse hair.

We finally called the HVAC people on Monday. The guy, Jason, came at about 1:00 p.m., and I walked him over to the entrance of our crawl space. Upon opening the crawl space door, Jason turned as white as a disco dancer, and said: "IS THAT A SNAKE?"

I looked around and didn't see anything. "Where? What, that? It's just a piece of insulation."

"NO, THAT. THAT."

I looked where he was pointing, and sure enough, it was a snake. Or actually, the fully intact, recently-shed skin of a snake. From the size and markings, it looked like the skin of a common black snake, a harmless non-poisonous species commonly found in these parts (elaphe obsoleta). But Jason was not in the mood for a science lesson. He asked me to come into the crawl space with him to keep an eye out for the nest of snakes that our house was surely harboring. I suddenly thought: "This is what it would be like if Indiana Jones worked for an HVAC company."

Now, you might think that if we had snakes, they would have eaten the mice before they ended up getting roasted in our heater. But my new theory is this: a snake brought the mouse into our crawl space and into our heater to have some good old slow-roasted North Carolina mouse barbecue. All the snake was missing was some vinegar-based barbecue sauce.

Jason managed to suck it up and finish the job. He used a piece of PVC pipe to jab at the fully blackened mouse until it crumbled into pieces. (I told him: "Don't touch it! It's EVIL!") He used a shop-vac to clean up the mess, and our house is now once again smoke-free.

But I can't help but think that maybe we need some more snakes around here. I've put out some barbecue sauce just in case.

Permalink 1 Comment

Posted by Ken in: funnyhaha, life

Comments

Comment #1 from Noelle (Guest)
2007 Nov 14 - 2:52 pm : #

Scott's bbq sauce is the superior Carolina vinegar based sauce. We buy it by the case.

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