I have a project going that has me putting some OSB down in my garage eaves to expand the storage I have. The project involves a lot of bending a body in a manner it may not be used to bending in; unfortunately, the body I’m using for this project is my own.
While I could go on about a mistake I made – a mistake that entailed doing work that saw me scooting around on plywood in shorts which worked to produce scores of micro abrasions on my legs that I didn’t notice until I got in the shower – I won’t. Especially since I should have learned my lesson after the afternoon I spent (15 years ago) roofing in shorts.
Instead, I’ll tell you about the trouble-spot I ran across.
As part of the project, I’m making sure all of the insulation is in place and snug against the parts of the roof it should be snug against. It was while I was inspecting the insulation at the end of an eave that something caught my eye. The something appeared to be a giant mold stain.
Mold is not good. And this mold was particularly not good as it was in a rough area to get to. And I couldn’t understand how it got where it was – which was going to make it a bear to figure out how to fix the problem so it didn’t recur – or why it didn’t seem to be currently wet.
Well, I thought, maybe it is wet. Thinking I’d poke the insulation and try to drag a piece out I got a two-foot piece of lathe, leaned in, and took a swipe at the insulation.
And I dragged out the carcass of a small animal.
No, I’m kidding. I think carcass suggests the the remains still have some meat on the bones… the thing I dragged out was nothing but bones. Or, as they’d say on CSI, a skeleton.
Right now you’re probably thinking one of two things. My guess is that the women have thoughts of “Eeeeww! A skeleton!?” while the men are thinking, “Man, you lucked out. Mold can be rough to get rid of.”
I was pretty happy that it was an animal. It was a opossum if I’m any judge, though my first thought was a cat as they tend to die in the most inconvenient-place-for-me spot they can – be it tucked away in a hard-to-reach corner under my garage steps or flat as a pancake in the road in front of my house. And now in a hard-to-reach spot in my eaves I thought, briefly, before giving the snout a better look.
The opossum had been dead and Skeletor-ized before I bought the house. I know as I’m in the garage all the time and I’d have noticed the deceased-cat-under-the-steps smell had the opossum gone to the great beyond while I owned the house.
Ewwww is right, but at least you got it out!!
New wife/new abrasions.
Sybil: And, as a special favor to the readers here, I tossed it right in the garbage rather than take a picture of it and post it.
Softy:
hmmm no picture, I’m a little upset! it could have been somewhere that you could have given us a link to.