The Sunny Porch Inn

So, we started cleaning out Sonny's house, which my sister-in-law Jen promptly dubbed "The Sunny Porch Inn."  At this point, a rather an over-optimistic description, but it certainly gives us a goal.

The current defining characteristic for the SPI (Sunny Porch Inn):  rat poop.

There was rat poop in the bedrooms, rat poop in the living room, rat poop in the bathroom and the closets. Rat poop in the carpet, on the floors, on the windowsills, in the drawers and light fixtures.  And there was rat poop in the kitchen.  

Oh, my, was there ever rat poop in the kitchen.  

There was a large cabinet in the kitchen which housed a sink and cabinets and drawers.  It was full of rat poop.  By 'full' I mean:  "Be careful when you open the cabinets that you’re not buried in the rat poop that comes pouring out."  But the rat poop wasn't JUST inside the cabinet; once the cabinet had been removed, we had to use a SHOVEL to scoop up the rat poop that had accumulated under it.  My six-year-old niece helped.

Did I mention we brought the kids along?  Again, like spraying mesquite, this was an activity that was, perhaps, not best suited for young children.  In fact, in retrospect, I realize it was an activity not best suited for anyone not wearing Nuclear-Biological-Chemical protective gear, an oxygen tank, and a protective face mask.  But, this is Texas.  The kids wore shoes.

Oddly enough, the children's interest began to flag after a couple of hours of sweeping rat poop, picking up rusty nails, prying up linoleum in the bathroom, and knocking down mud dauber nests.  The mud daubers were the other main inhabitant of the house:  they look like black wasps (although they don't sting), and they build nests out of mud that look like tiny adobe houses plastered onto the walls and ceilings.  Well, I say tiny.  Some of the nests were the size of softballs.

So, to revitalize and encourage us all, we decided to call our experience "Summer Camp."

I'll bet you never went to a summer camp like this.  We were Camp Rat-A-Poopee; our campers ranged in age from 4-8, and we had lots of fun and games!  Our team events were:  removing bathroom linoleum with crowbars (the "Tiler" team), picking up rusty metal and broken glass in the front yard (the "Trash Masher" team -- they got to wear latex gloves) and removing and picking up rusty nails in the house (the "Nailer" team.   This was the most popular job and there were some energetic contests for the limited number of claw hammers).  We did not, however, offer swimming.  Even I shudder to think what that might have entailed; the septic tank is very inexpertly buried just off the front porch.....

We even had a camp cheer and a camp song.  Our cheer was based on the two noises most frequently uttered while cleaning:  Ew!! (for rat poop) and Ooh! (for mud dauber nests):

Ew! Ooh!

Ew! Ooh!

Ew! Ew! Ew!

Ew! Ooh!

Ew! Ooh!

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!

Gooooooo Camp Rat-A-Poopee

(Shouted of course, with a great deal of gusto and the appropriate facial expressions.) 

Our camp song was sung to the tune of "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover:"

I'm looking over

My dead rat Rover

That pooped on the kitchen floor!

He pooped in the hallway, he pooped door,

He pooped all over the bathroom floor.

No need explaining the poop remaining,

He pooped in the carpet too!

I'm looking over

My dead rat Rover

That pooped on the kitchen floor!

These two little interludes energized us quite a bit.

And we even had a real dead rat Rover, our camp mascot, I guess you could say.  He didn't do much, though; just lay there looking stiff.  Bits of his tail broke off and got kicked around in the living room for a while.  We found him much later in the attic.  More on that to come.

Once the top layer of rat poop had been removed from the living room, my brother Michael started prying off the hideous wooden paneling from the walls and ceilings in the living room.  We noticed a slight discoloration and distortion in one section of the panelling which, we correctly surmised, was covering up the hole in the true ceiling for a stovepipe.

We did not correctly surmise the cause of the discoloration.  We naively thought it was water damage from rain leaking through the stovepipe hole in the roof.

It was water damage, of a sort, but not from rain.  

This particular location was, in fact, Rat Poop Central; the Mecca for all rats in a six county radius.  It made what we found in the kitchen look positively sparse.  The rats must have been 'visiting' here for decades; it was probably a main tourist attraction for "Rat Family Tours:" they'd ride in their little busses up to the front porch, swarm into the attic, and gaze in wonder at the Eiffel Tower of poop perched in that one little spot.  Gallons of poop.  Acres of poop.  Pounds and pounds and pounds of poop.

And it all fell on Michael when he pried off the paneling.  Rat pellets poured out, rolled down, clattered all over the floor, and made a mound ankle high in places.  Michael was standing more or less right under the hole, but the paneling blocked the worst of it.  Sort of.

Shortly after this little episode, Michael decided he'd had enough fun and games for one day, and went home to wash the rat poop out of his hair and ears and clothes and shoes.  The rest of us were not far behind.  We left the SPI enveloped in a swirling cloud of dust and, well, rat poop.  The kids and I sat on the tailgate of the truck as we drove home, trying to air out, and shouting Ew! a lot.  I fully expected us all to come down with the bubonic plague the next day.  Imagine my relief when we didn't die.  Still, we probably should have given the CDC a courtesy call.

When I got home, the first thing I did was to shower.  Fully clothed.  In the yard.  I was just too filthy to even get into the bathtub until I'd washed off first.

The next day, we bought a shop vac.  Because someone was going to have to go into the attic to clean up the acres of poop that were still up there.

And I had a feeling it was going to be me.