In our last episode of “The Joys of Home Ownership: Dead Creatures Edition” we nearly met our doom when we came face to face with BLACK WIDOWS.  And now for yet another adventure!

Roughly a month after moving into my new home, one morning at 6:30 I could hear rustling coming from the kitchen.  Having been woken up from a dead slumber, I was freaked out wondering if someone had decided to invite themselves in to check out my great decor without asking me first.  I staggered out of bed and very sensibly tugged on some shorts before tip-toeing out to meet my home invaders only to find that there wasn’t anyone there.  In fact there wasn’t any noise at all!  Perplexed, I went back to bed and not a moment after I got under the covers did I hear that sound again.  A desperate, scratchety clawing at metal.  I realized after several rounds of me wandering out to the kitchen only to find the sound had stopped and going back to bed only to hear it again etc… that the sound was a bird, stuck in the exhaust vent for my hot water heater.

Now it will help you to understand that as my home is 100 years old this year, it has a lot of “character” otherwise known as “an endless list of stuff that I just have to make peace with till I can renovate”.  My water heater sits in the corner of my kitchen, keeping my range company and showing off all its pipes and vents to the rest of the room.  The bird had become stuck in the vent duct and was unable to get out.  It was positioned in a generous part of a t-joint that came down out of the ceiling and as I surveyed the scene, still groggy, I realized that I couldn’t address the problem till after work without being very late.  I left the kitchen and set about my normal routine.

I picked out my clothes for the day and started the shower.  However, my brain hadn’t put together the very fundamental concept that the shower IS DIRECTLY CONNECTED TO THE WATER HEATER.  This means that the heater turns on when someone clueless retard like me uses hot water.  When hot, noxious exhaust gasses leave the heater by their designed course, this is generally not a problem UNLESS THERE IS A BIRD IN THE VENT.

At this point in time the bird promptly lost its shit, both figuratively and literally, and started working its way further down the duct till it was just above the heater where, overcome by fumes and heat, it promptly died.  I called the office, let them know I was fishing a dead bird out of my water heater and showed up two hours late after disassembling everything cleaning it out and putting it all back together.  Oddly enough no one questioned my tardiness, this was one of those things that you just can’t make up.

One of the joys of being a home owner is the freedom to do whatever you want with your home.  You don’t need approval from the HOA or have your landlord come out sometime between tomorrow and the rapture to fix things.  I’ve looked forward to this new opportunity/responsibility for years.  I was raised to be hands-on and to roll up my sleeves and fix shit.  It’s a talent that I enjoy because I can take care of myself and it seems to leave a good many men all hot and bothered!

Since I’ve moved into my home, I’ve done a number of small improvement projects like installing a ceiling fan and changing my locks.  I get an immense amount of satisfaction from doing these things because I have direct input and control of my new environment, and damn it looks good!  What I was not expecting, as a new homeowner, WAS THE SHEER AMOUNT OF DEAD ANIMALS I WAS GOING TO HAVE TO EFFING DEAL WITH!

One of my first projects was to rectify a problem with the lone basement window which I have.  My assumption is that this window’s original function was as a coal chute or just general access to the underside of the house.  In spite of the hours of This Old House I have soaked up over the years, I can’t claim to fully understand all the little features which were built into my home back in 1908, but I digress.  This window opening had at one point some sort of actual frame with a window glazing in it.  This window had been broken, god knows when, and had been letting leaves and dirt and crap accumulate in the window and crawl space.

As a new, diligent home owner I had to fix it immediately!  Finally living in my very own mental episode of This Old House, I was excited and prepared to excavate the old window and make plans for the new closure.  What I was not prepared for, however, were the BLACK WIDOWS.  I am generally not a fan of spiders however, when spiders come enhanced with death, neurotoxins, dying and, incidentally, more death, I have a tendency to COMPLETELY LOSE MY SHIT.

After digging out all the old crap stuck in the window opening which was anchored together epic amounts of spiderwebs, I came face to face with a shiny black and red BLACK WIDOW.  I immediately ran to Home Depot and bought more pesticide than any rational human being would deem necessary but I will take this moment to remind you of the death with the dying.  I unloaded an entire can of the deadliest spider killer I could find on every surface even remotely associated with the window.  After nearly gassing myself in the process I visited the murder scene and found the carcasses of many dead spiders scattered from hell to breakfast and was simultaneously grossed out beyond reason and pleased with myself.

I consider myself a conscientious person and do not relish going out of my way to harm other living creatures.  I try to appreciate each form of life for what it is.  But when it comes to the place where I lay down, unconscious for many every hours every day, I have zero tolerance for creepy crawly things that could possibly kill me.  After this small incident was over, I relaxed thinking that my days of dealing death were over in my new old home…  How wrong I was.

Stay tuned.