Smell Ya Later – The Misfit Farmer

Although pant fit may be a reliable indicator that you’ve gained weight, I prefer a more holistic gauge of body mass, specifically snugness in the crawl space. I don’t go in the crawl space often, but when I do I nearly always leave with mixed feelings–I’m happy to make it out alive but I’m also depressed because the fit seems to be getting tighter with every passing year. If I ever go weeks without writing, check the crawl space–I may have gotten stuck. I wouldn’t be the first lifeform to come to a final resting place under our house. There is the dead possum skeleton near the northern most vent duct that is well on its way to being fossilized at this point. I encounter it every time I try to crawl to the territory under the far room, which is an effort in futility because the space underneath the far room tapers to a mere sliver. 

Out of desperation, I sometimes attempt an exploratory crawl, in the hopes of finding an undiscovered passage to the hinterlands, to retrieve the carcass of whatever varmint has died there. We now have a brick underpinning that keeps most critters out but every few years a woodland creature will choose a plot under our far room as its final resting place. I can’t really blame them–I can’t imagine a more secluded spot–in the last 100 years, there has been less human activity under the far room than there has been on the surface of the moon.  

Speaking of the moon, it would have been nice to have a space suit while I was crawling through the crawl space yesterday. Indeed, every few years, we have to go to war with the local skunk herd to reclaim our territory, and this was one of those years. Earlier in the spring, Natalie deployed moth balls, dish soap, and strange concoctions of essential oils and herbs–basically rudimentary witchcraft–to keep the skunks at bay until I could trap them and dispose of them. Unfortunately, one of the skunks breached our defenses, found a loose brick in our underpinning, and completed a suicide mission under our house, dying right beside the air handler for our heating and air unit. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. 

My only consolation is that it didn’t die under the far room, where I never would have been able to reach and extricate the carcass. As it stands now, I have gone back in time and am practicing social distancing again, although sometimes that is impossible like when I’m having a suspicious mole cut off my back at the dermatologist’s office. 

DERMATOLGIST: [as he cuts the mole off my back] Smells like we might have some skunks coming around the office again. 

ME: [as I’m laying on the table] Sorry, doc, it’s just me. A skunk died under our house. It’s been awful–we have barely slept at all for a week. I may just fall asleep while you’re cutting on my back, I’m so tired. 

NURSE: [tightening her mask] I read on Facebook that this is when skunks are most active.

ME: This one was definitely not active. It was dead as a doornail. I’ve got a picture of it on my phone if you want to see it.

NURSE: [putting on a second mask] No, thanks.