Weekend Visitor

I Don’t Often Call on Maintenance, But When I Do…

Like any other Saturday in early March, I stepped into my garage to start the car, warm it up before going for groceries. No snow, sunny and crisp enough to call it sweatshirt weather. As soon as I open the house door to my garage, I automatically hit the garage door opener. Walk around to the driver’s side, get in, push button to start…it all happens by instinct, takes less than a minute, do it every day. But this morning as I tossed my purse on the passenger seat, my eyes glanced right and spied holes in the wall! Holy wow!!!…not really, probably said holy shit!

Saturday morning, March 2018

I backed my car into the street and stood there looking into garage dumbfounded. The rental office is closed on weekends; I didn’t know what to do at first. My son was working but said he’d come look when he had a chance. It was going to be creepy whether I went back in now, or when I came home with groceries…better to have food and necessities I decided. Before I closed the garage, I took a photo, thinking management might need proof of how the wall got messed up.

Sunday morning, same place, bigger hole!

I’d taken my groceries in through the front door, left my car in driveway overnight and made sure to tuck towels along the inside door before going to bed. What if “it” chewed its way into the house I worried all night. My son arrived and the neighbor next door came over; “this qualifies as an emergency situation,” they both said. I really didn’t want to bother our maintenance guys when I had two capable men standing right there. They grabbed shovels and an old fishing net while discussing what it might be, where was it hiding? They started with flashlight peeks into the hole, then started moving things around in my storage area. I stayed down by the street, ready to run.

Soon other neighbors were venturing over, noticing the jagged opening, chewed-up drywall crumbs, offering to help. One of the retired maintenance crew who lived in the community drove by, wondering what the commotion was about. He scratched his head and mumbled how he’d seen everything but nothing like this. A young woman walking her dog stopped to ask me what was going on. “I’m a veterinarian,' she said, “may I see the scat?” “What’s scat” we all asked?

Sure enough, there were little brown droppings all over the floor…seemingly too small a critter to make this kind of damage. “Not true,” vet lady said. “It’s not a mouse or rat, it’s much bigger.” Yikes… who knew size of poop does not always correlate with size of the animal! “Whatever it is, it’s frantically trying to get out in the quiet of the night, but the garage door vibrating, the car running, scares it back into hiding instead of heading to daylight and freedom, “she calmly explained to us. All the men just stared at her, nervously looking around…the door was open, nothing running, just our quiet voices.

AI generated photo.

I’ve lived in this community for ten years and rarely need maintenance help, but when I do…😂😂 Instead of calling Monday morning, I emailed the manager at 8AM and sent these photos asking please send someone soon! Mike and Kevin showed up immediately with their pickup truck loaded with a variety of cages in back. Yikes again! My worst fears kicked in as I imagined it chomping away, ready to pounce the next morning.

Monday morning. More holes and garage door wires were damaged so door wouldn’t open/close.

“Is there something like an animal control company or city department that should be here?” I asked. By the size of the cages, I feared it was going to be huge and dangerous. They’d seen the photos and heard the grapevine version of my weekend. “We love a new challenge; better than fixing toilets or shoveling snow” they laughed. Oh dear God…I’d had enough drama and excitement and now I was going to have to worry about them. I decided to stay inside the house, out of their way and its way, ignore it all. They spent the morning searching, patching the walls and repairing the garage door mechanism.

I must have ignored it all pretty well. After lunch I went out the front door to take a walk. On my door handle was their card, mission accomplished, case closed!

A groundhog! I googled this photo to use on Facebook for a photo story. Their To-Do list comment cracked me up!

I took it with me and walked straight to the office to thank them and find out where they found him. Rodents often get in at times, but they’d never seen this kind of damage. I told them what the Vet had shared, and they agreed. Apparently, groundhogs can predict weather but aren’t too smart about getting out while the getting is good! They had searched in, under, on top of and underneath everything and were just about to call the local critter control when they spotted him behind my workbench. They crept up on him with a big cannister to take “far, far, away!”

I wondered if they meant they’d released him in the woods nearby, but they said no, he won’t be back. Do you think critter control gets them to groundhog heaven? When I thought of it that way, I felt bad for him. He was probably cold and hungry and not at all happy about six more weeks of winter!

It was quite the attraction and excitement on my street that spring. Met a lot of new folks, bought the office staff, including heroes of the day a bottle of Bailey’s for their coffee breaks. Nowadays there’s a new maintenance crew…haven’t needed them yet, fingers crossed it’ll just be a leaky faucet!

Be well, be happy, be kind! Joanie/Joan 😊

🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘

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Much love to you all and a shout-out to

LeeAnn Young

for continuing your loyalty! I like to leave you with a song most times…right now Alexa and I are playing Bruce songs non-stop. Years ago while teaching fourth grade, I belonged to a dance group called Synchronicity….one of our favorites to perform was Glory Days…great energizer for kids and adults alike. There are still glory days ahead for all of us!