We’re moving into a new house. As part of the move, we get to sort through all that old stuff we haven’t even looked at in years and wonder if we should throw it away? I am convinced that this is what happened to the original copies of Flavius Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews. These great historical works were not lost in battle, or destroyed by fire. No – some Roman guy said to his wife while moving from one villa to another, “Why do we keep that old copy of Josephus? We haven’t opened it in 10 years!” And so they tossed it into the paper recycling bin out by the curb. But I digress. 

We bought our present house 10 years ago when we were first married. In those early days before children, my organized wife used to print out all the interesting and funny e-mails and place them in 3-ring binders. From the year 1995 I found this old story that I thought was worth re-running. The date is December 1995. The context is that I am a new homeowner, exploring a newly purchased house and learning/fixing what the previous homeowners have done. So take a deep breath, and step back with me 10 years into: 

Chapter 5. Wherein it is told how Carl explores his attic some more, and what he finds there.

In preparation for the insulation fairies to come and blow an R50 layer of insulation up into my attic, I decided to go up there and prepare the crawl space by taking out things that didn’t belong there, installing a few boards where they would need to step across a pipe, and so on. My key objective was to fix a vent from the stove. The previous owners had arranged for a pipe to come up from a fan over the range where the fan would spew the exhaust skyward. There’s a nice-looking chimney vent coming out of the roof there. 

Unfortunately, they had neglected to connect the exhaust pipe to the roof vent, leaving instead a 2-foot gap in the attic space between the top of the pipe and the bottom of the vent! I guess they just figured that the heatons and greasons would just know where to go. Or maybe they had been reading the book of Job and knew that “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” (Job 5:7) 

In any case, I don’t think I have 20 years of congealed bacon grease in my attic, but I wanted it fixed anyway. A bigger problem seemed to be that there was no valve to keep the cold air from outside (the attic) from creeping its frosty tendrils into my nice warm kitchen. In the mornings the stove top and kitchen floor were quite cold, and so as a temporary measure I had stuffed a washrag behind the vent grill and below the fan. But that solution wouldn’t do for long. No – this sounds like a job for – Super Homeowner! 

I put on my respirator and crawled up there, trailing a butterfly valve, a length of vent pipe, and tin snips, and a roll of duct tape. The pipe didn’t line up with the vent, so I had to re-direct the air flow in a 45-degree turn toward its destiny. The butterfly valve is forced open by rushing air, and it closes when you turn off the fan (Yay!). A few strips of duct tape (you can actually use it for ducts) made quick work of any minor leaks and made my little interior chimney as stable as the day is long! I tested it and it worked. Hah! Score one for the good guys. 

Well, as long as I’m up here, what else is amiss? On a previous foray into the Attic Of Doom I had seen something strange over against the eaves, in that narrow section where the roof slants down to meet the ceiling and everything gets wedged together. There was a board laid between the joists, and a hand mirror. Beyond that, right up against the eaves, was a lower section corresponding to the dropped ceiling in the kitchen above the sink. Hmmm . . . it looked as if somebody had wanted to peer down into the lower section. They had been unable to slide all the way into the wedge, so they had used a mirror to look downward. Hmmm again . . . the plot thickens. 

I wedged my body onto the board and held the mirror forward. It was one of those magnifying ones and I couldn’t see much. So I wedged forward some more, grunting and groaning, until my scalp was scraping against the roofing nails and my nose was brushing the joists. Unh, ugh, awh! I peered downward . . . 

. . . and saw nothing of interest. Just some drywall covered with insulation fuzz. But wait! What is that running next to my ear? It looks like a rubber hose. Yes, it’s an old garden hose running farther down into the wall between the studs. What on earth is that doing there? 

Well, I don’t want no unexplained hoses in our house! Somehow I pulled myself back from the abyss and freed my arms enough to pull on the hose. Gingerly I pulled it up out of the wall, taking care lest a spray of water should suddenly come gushing forth from somewhere. Easy, easy now. 

There was something brown stuck near the end, looking like a hardened bunch of rubber or that foam they use to fill holes. In the dim light of the flashlight I couldn’t really tell. I pulled up the entire hose and nothing horrible happened. Oh well, let’s get out here and back into the realm of the living. 

(This next part gets kind of gross, so if you’re squeamish you might want to check out the Boulder Cam with Netscape instead or something.) 

Back in the garage I looked at the hose and the brown thing. At first I thought it was some Alien child’s toy, like the one that almost ate Sigourney Weaver. It had that weird skull and a tail and some claws. But wait! This . . . is . . . a . . . very dry, very mummified, and very very dead animal! Gross!!!

The dead body had absolutely no hair, but was all dry and stiff and wrapped around the hose in a death-grip.  Yuck! I finally concluded that it was a squirrel. It was too big to be a rat, and the shape of the skull and length of the tail seemed to suggest a squirrel. I still haven’t figured out how it lost all its hair. 

I put the mummified body into the garbage, to join three dumb mice that I had trapped earlier that week in the Great Landfill In The Sky. So here’s what must have happened: The squirrel got into the attic through the vents and somehow got trapped in the wall next to the dishwasher. The homeowners heard it scratching around and went up into the attic to try to fish it out. They couldn’t, but they left a hose there in hopes that the squirrel could climb out of its own accord. 

The poor squirrel never did make it out alive. It either starved there or died of thirst, but clutched onto the hose with its last strength in hopes of someday, someday, making it back to the light. The original homeowners forgot about the whole episode. But many years later, I came along, pulled out the remains of the squirrel, and gave it a decent burial. Whimper, sniff, sniff . . . 

The attic vents now have screens on them. I also forwarded some postal mail to the previous homeowners and wrote a note on it explaining what finally happened to the squirrel that got stuck up in the attic, so at last they will know. 

Whew!