In Which the Air Conditioning Stops Working

Some of you know that a few weeks ago, I tried to change the fan in my car from the defrost position and discovered that it would not move. Then I tried again and something let go, and now the knob that adjusts the direction of airflow turns a lot, but the air only comes out on the windscreen. My air conditioner only works as defrost, and because I live in Indiana, it causes condensation on the outside of the car and means I am driving around with my windscreen wipers going on a day without rain.

It's hot in my car, most all the time.

Yesterday, after a thunderstorm, I arrived home and got out of the hot car. I walked through the humidity, and I walked into the house.

It was hotter inside the house than outside the house. This was a problem.

We investigated. It turned out that the thermostat was working. the fan on the furnace that moves air around the house worked. Except the box outside wasn't moving. I flipped many switches throughout the house. Nothing happened.

I called the AC Man. He said, "Turn off the power. Turn it all off. And wait 15 minutes. Then turn it back on."

I did this. I did not electrocute myself. I was proud.

Nothing happened.

I called the AC Man back. I said, "Please help us. Come as soon as possible. I have asthma and might die. No worries, though."

He agreed to come today. He said he'd come over in the afternoon. I got home at 12:30 PM and ate, then I waited. And waited.

The man finally arrived. He stayed for about five minutes, just long enough to rip the side off the air conditioning and flee, because inside the air conditioning unit, there was a NEST.

Now, last year we had a giant snake living a few feet away, but it was not a snake nest. The AC Man did not even know about the snakes, which is good, because they moved out ages ago and that story might have freaked him out a bit.

He told us he'd seen WASPS. And that there was a nest. And also that there was buzzing. And he said, "I don't know who you should call. But you should call someone. Also I cannot put the machine back together until they are gone. Also when you clean out the nest, it will still not work."

Then he drove away in his minivan, leaving us to heat and eventual death by hornets.

I called Dad. "Bring home as much deadly poison as the store will sell you," I said. "Also bring home some that sprays from far away, because you will have a head start."

A few hours later, Dad came home. He had a bottle of unimpressive-looking wasp spray that didn't even come with any safety gear.

I showed him the nest. I turned off the power to the AC so he didn't accidentally electrocute himself through the stream of deadly poison leaving the can. He said, "Oh, that's not wasps, I don't think."

And then he took a paint-scraper. And he stabbed the nest with the scraper and waited for the wasps to come out and attack him.

Nothing happened.

"It smells like mice," he announced. I did not ask him how he knew the smell of mice. He proceeded to use a garden trowel, a mini-crowbar, and the paint-scraper to dig all of the nest out of the air conditioner.

I made him spray for wasps anyway, just so they wouldn't get any ideas. Then I called the AC Man back again. He could not come, but he is coming tomorrow, so that's something. Just one more day of sticking to furniture and gasping for air as my lungs swell closed, then the air conditioner will be fixed.

Unless he needs a part.

Unless the whole unit is ruined.

Unless there are basilisks living under the paving stones around the air conditioner.

Wish us luck.

Snake Redux

Darcy and I were walking down to the river. There are stairs that lead straight down to a path along the bank, and Darcy is quite adept at racing down them. But this time, she stopped at the wide middle step and whirled around. Then she started growling.

I think we all know what I saw when I got down to the middle stair. Yes. I knew what I was going to find long before I reached the step in question.

And there he was, the snake. The same snake, I might add. Trapped between a human and an enthusiastic dog, poor Snakey was terrified. He flattened himself into a little snake ribbon and remained as still as possible.

Naturally, I yelled for Paul. He is, after all, the environmental studies major. And he hadn't seen Snakey up close! I was the only one who had. Looking again, I could see the pattern on his scales more clearly and I knew I had been right--this was the endangered Kirtland's Snake. Also, he was scared of me. And that made me realize that snakes have feelings. And that made me realize snakes have little snake souls. And then I thought, "This snake must be protected from all harm. Poor Snakey."

Paul came out of the house, momentarily distracting Darcy. and the snake saw his opening. As quickly as it could move, it whirled around and sped down toward the river. It traveled faster than I thought possible, and its S-shaped movements kicked up sand (Is "kicked" the right word when the thing doing the kicking has no legs? I'm going for it. I'm sticking with "kicked."). By the time Paul reached us, the snake was slipping into the river, which presumably meant it was safe from us.

I have no idea if the snake is still living in the crawlspace. I haven't seen him in the vicinity of late. But one thing is clear: it has found a happy home here. And I will need to watch my step as I walk around the yard, so I do not accidentally stand on poor Snakey.

In Which We Are Beset by Snakes

You know how I live in a house? And that house has walls and a roof and floors? And when you build a house, stuff has to go underneath the floor to keep the house from crumbling to bits and falling into the river (if you happen to live on a river)?

When our house was built, the people who made it first built one section. Then they decided they rather liked the river view, and they built another section, an addition. The addition is where we watch TV, where we sit and stare at each other when we are too tired to move, and where the chunk of tree swung down off the roof and bashed through the window when my brother and father forgot Newton's Laws of Motion.

That section of the house, the addition, has no basement underneath it. It has a crawl space. So, if you were so inclined, you could slither underneath the house on your belly, no doubt discovering all manner of unspeakable things, like spiders as big as your face.

And now, snakes.

On Sunday, I took a stroll around the house with Mom, because she intended to show me what she planned to do with the area around our air conditioning unit.

"I will get stone," she said. "And I will put it around the air conditioner, and I will take all these plants out."

While she said this, Paul was driving around on the lawn mower, trimming the grass on our lawn.

And as we looked at the air conditioner, we noticed the entrance to the crawl space seemed...open. And that there seemed to be a something in the gap between the crawl space door and the side of the house. And that something had scales. And also three tails.







Snakes do not come with three tails.

Unless there is more than one snake. Then there can be three tails, but it means three snakes.

We have (at least) three snakes living under our house.

Naturally, we were surprised. We waved Paul over, and he observed the snakes as they went back into their (our) home. And then we went to the grocery store and Paul finished mowing.

When we came back, I went out with my camera to see if I could find the snakes. And I got a stick, for poking.

I poked the stick into the crawl space to no avail, but when I turned to walk back toward the house, I noticed something.

Something...living.

There it was. The snake, which, according to Mom, has "girth" and is therefore more horrible than smaller, lesser snakes. The snake was between me and the door to the house, and while I could walk around the house to get to the door, this was serious. I was not going to be confronted by a snake like this. No.

"So. There you are," I said. "You with your scales and things. On the cement. There."

The snake did not reply.

"You need to, you know...go. Now. It's important that you move out," I continued. "Because this is a house for people with limbs. And now I am getting a longer stick, because I have opposable thumbs, and I can do that."

I was very gentle. I did not want to hurt the snake. Not ever. But I did want to scare it a little, to show it that humans are scary and that it maybe did not want to hang out around us so much, even if it did have a conveniently climate-controlled home to live in. I moved the stick close to the snake, and it coiled a bit and moved its tiny head up to look at me a bit better. It stuck out its snakey tongue.

Having tried a few times to identify various snakes, I knew belly color was important. And I also thought it might be helpful to me if the snake wasn't in my path any more. Also it could go down the slope and live a happy snake-y life.

So I took my stick and picked up the snake with it, Steve Irwin-style. I then moved the surprisingly heavy snake for a few steps, until the whole experience freaked me out enough that the snake slithered off the stick and into the ivy.

I fetched Darcy. Together, we watched the snake from a safe distance, occasionally parting the ivy with the stick so we could see where the snake was hiding.

Then we went inside and tried to figure out how to remove snakes from a crawlspace without having an Indiana Jones experience with them. Apparently, the Indonesians know quite a bit about this sort of thing, and you can encourage snakes to leave with water (nope), fire (nope), or by ringing the house with sulfur (what a lovely smell that will cause) or mothballs (seriously, do they intend humans to live in a house ringed with noxious chemicals?).

We have resolved to throw mothballs in the crawlspace and see what happens. Then we will seal up the crawlspace.

Also, it seems that our snake friends might actually be endangered. So there's that.