I hope everyone is doing well this week. We’ve continued to enjoy our 2 weeks off, as it’s been a while since we’ve had that long of a time to relax and reenergize. This week we’re back out on the road (as of today). The adventures continue, as we were only a few hours from home when our van started to shake violently. We immediately pulled over to check it out. We thought it was either a flat tire, or some crazy sudden alignment issue. We inspected the tires, and we couldn’t visibly see anything wrong, but we knew that something was up, or the van wouldn’t be shaking that way. We promptly looked up the closest tire place, and headed that direction. A few minutes later we had arrived at a local brake/tire shop, and sure enough, one of our van’s rear tires was engorged (the exact diagnosis from the local tire guru). From the moment we had initially stopped, to the time we pulled up to the shop, one of our tires had swollen up almost to the point of exploding. If we had driven much longer on that tire, it would have blown, and we probably would have wrecked, since the weight of the trailer would have pulled the back of the van to the ground. Bad news. We know God was looking out for us, because we are safe and sound, our van is safe, and we got a good deal on a new tire. Yay!
This week’s installment of David Troyer’s relatively boring, but astonishingly interesting stories from domestic home life is a continuation of last week’s story. If you didn’t read last week’s blog, you need to go read it first, as the rest of this story will make little sense to you otherwise. Trust me, you’ll want to read Part 1 first…then the rest of this will bring more joy to your life.
Ok…I believe we left off with a trapped raccoon in my bedroom…
You can imagine that as I sprinted out of my room, that my mind was racing with all kinds of questions. The one most obvious question, How did a raccoon get into the house?!?! Additionally, two things occurred to me at that point. 1: I ran out of my room without any clothes other than what I wore to bed, and 2; my phone and keys were still in my bedroom. So, if I wanted to leave the house, or call anyone, I had to go back into my bedroom…….with the trapped raccoon. Not good.
Ok, back to the “How did a raccoon get into the house?” question. It didn’t take but a few seconds for me to realize that the door to my bedroom had been closed all night, so either the raccoon was already in my room when I went to bed, or it somehow got into my room during the night. One background detail to this story is that neither of my two housemates were home that week. So, it was just me to fight the raccoon battle. Another important detail, both of their bedroom doors had been shut all week. Soooo, knowing this, I knew that if the raccoon had been in the house earlier the previous day and got into my room, that it would have been roaming around the house, and it was likely that it would leave some sort of clue that it had been there. So, other than the other two bedrooms (because, how could it have gotten in there if the doors were shut?), I checked the whole house. No signs of a raccoon anywhere.
This is where it gets interesting. I knew that if the raccoon had gotten into my bedroom during the night, there was only one way in…through the floor vent. If it got into my room, then it was possible that it had also gotten into the other bedrooms as well. Soooo, I went to the bedroom across the hall, and inspected that bedroom. I found that it was empty; no raccoons. But, the vent had been pushed up out of the floor. Aha!!! The raccoon had been here!!! And there was my answer as to how he got into the house. Now all I needed to do was check the last bedroom to make sure it was ok…
I giggle every time I think about this inspection. The last bedroom is the master bedroom of the house. I cautiously walked into the room, and I immediately saw evidence of an intrusion. One of his vents was pushed out of the floor as well. Not only that, but there were little piles of raccoon poop on the floor, which was both repulsive and hilarious at the same time. I’m thinking at this moment, “Oh man, Tim (roommate) is going to flip when he hears about this.” Then I walked into the master bathroom, and it turns out the fun had only just begun. The first thing I see in the bathroom is that the raccoon had knocked the toothpaste bottle and toothbrush holder(including toothbrush) into the sink. Apparently the raccoon then thought it would be a good idea to poo all over the items in the sink!!! Not just a little…a lot!!! Once again, completely disgusting and hilarious at the same time…
By this time, I realized that when the raccoon had sprinted towards me and then run under my bed, he was really making his way to the vent in my room. The vent is at the foot of my bed. I knew at that point that there was no way he was still in the house. I got brave enough to go back into my room, and of course, I found that the raccoon was long gone. Cue huge sigh of relief… ahhhhhhhh….
In the aftermath of that event we found how the raccoon had gotten into the ventilation system in the house, and sealed it off. I also want to say that when I called my roommate Tim about what happened in his bedroom, he laughed hysterically. Since he was going to be gone for a while, I had the joy of cleaning up the raccoon poo, but frankly, the whole thing was so funny I didn’t really mind. Good times.
That my friends, is a another chapter in “David Troyer’s relatively boring, but astonishingly interesting stories from domestic home life.”
Again, I hope you’re all doing well… and I’ll be back again next week.
Luke 10:27
David