Well, I was wrong. But I'm not about to say something stupid like, "This--this right here--this is the grossest thing ever to happen to me." No way. Because the way I see it, Karma is a mean little witch with a wicked sense of humor, so if I make that claim then she'll try to top it, and I still have a little bit of demo work to do elsewhere in the house where something horrible could be hiding.
Anyhow, there I was standing on the ladder all geared up (respirator, safety goggles, lucky hat, and the rest) once again, pulling out the old Rock Wool insulation batts. Removing them was pretty easy--just grab an end, pull, and roll up as you go. A dusty and dirty job, but not really disgusting.
Until....(cue ominous soundtrack music here)...until I pulled out a big chunk of insulation and found something odd. It looked like a shoe stuck down in the rock wool. "That's weird," I said to Louis Cat (who, as always, is serving as my foreman on this job) "What the hell would a shoe be doing in the ceiling?" I grabbed the "shoe" with one hand and pulled the insulation away from it. Then I saw a tooth.
(Note: The following comment is slightly edited.)
"Oh, Cheeses! Oh, Cheeses and Rice! It's a fudgin' skull!"
And then I dry-heaved. For five minutes.
And then I went back into the bedroom to see what it really was and whether or not I'd have to call the cops or an exorcist.
Here is where you should probably stop reading if you have a weak stomach. You certainly shouldn't look at the next couple of photos if you tend at all towards queasiness or if you don't have a slightly sick sense of humor.
The thing wasn't a shoe. It wasn't a skull, either. Well, part of it included a skull, but--oh, Hell's Bells, I'll just show it to you already:
Urrp. (Sorry.) A dried-up dead rat. The ruler is there so you know how big it is and for proof that it's a rat, not a mouse. Although, really, I'm not sure what difference that makes--either way, it's still a dead rodent that was in my ceiling. We won't discuss how it may have gotten into my house, or how long it lived in there, or the possibility that based on the rate of decomposition it might not have been all that long ago that it was alive and in my ceiling. Urrp. (Sorry again.) My friend Rachel exclaimed when she saw this photo, "It's Mrs. Kelly's pet buck-tooth Chihuahua!" Currently, I'm accepting this utterance as the gospel truth, because finding a petrified Chihuahua, even a buck-tooth one, in my ceiling is way better than finding a petrified rat.
And then I sorta lost my mind a little bit (more) and decided that if Tilda Swinton sleeping in a plastic box is art, then I could create a modern art installation right here in my own home. So:
I call this piece "Just Hangin' Out Doin' Hood Rat Stuff With My Friends" or "Heyyyyy, Macarena!"
I probably shouldn't give up my real job.