Not too bad, right? In some places the next layer of ceiling tiles had fallen down, so occasionally when I pulled on a ceiling tile it had a stack of those smaller tiles on top of it. I worked my way over to the other half of the room.
And here I want to pause to thank everybody who reminded me to wear a respirator. I am really, truly, wholeheartedly thankful for that advice. Really. If y'all lived here, I'd bake you a pie. Although you might not want to eat it after you read this next part....
Fair warning: In just a minute I am going to tell you the most disgusting thing that's ever happened to me while working on this house. Some of you might remember when Larry and I uncovered the mud dauber catacombs and nursery on the side porch and how I ran out into the yard and gagged after seeing hundreds of mud dauber larvae wrapped up in green leaves all over the side of my house. This is worse than that, and that still makes me shudder when I think of it.
Okay. So, I was standing on a ladder in the middle of the room, wearing my standard work-on-the-house uniform: my lucky Pierce Manufacturing cap, a hoodie, yoga pants, and old Converse with no socks. On this particular night I was also wearing my geeky glasses, Charlie's safety glasses on top of those, a pair of orange chem gloves, and a respirator mask. The top of my head was about 18 inches below the level of the ceiling. I pulled on a ceiling tile and it was heavy, but I thought that was just because it had a stack of those other ceiling tiles on top of it, so I gave it a really good yank, it popped down out of the ceiling, and...
seven pounds of mouse shit rained down on me.
It went down my sweatshirt, fell between my two pairs of glasses, peppered my face and my hair, stuck to my pants, and filtered into my shoes. About two pounds of that seven pounds of mouse shit ended up in the hood of my sweatshirt. I'm not ashamed to admit that I screamed like a little girl. I jumped down off the ladder and said...wait for it...."Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" Yes, I did. My first instinct was to rip off my respirator and get the hell out of there, but then all that training we have at work about HazMat situations kicked in and I realized two things: 1. I do not want to inhale any of this junk; and 2. I need to contain this mess to this room. So I did the sensible thing. I stripped off all my clothes. (If you've never tried to take off a hoodie while wearing a respirator, I don't recommend it.) That was when I found the two pounds of mouse doody in the hood of my shirt and nearly barfed in my respirator. I shook my clothes out thoroughly, put them into a trash bag, tied it shut, and left them in the middle of the room. Then I walked across the room nekkid except for my poop-filled Converse and the respirator--I was looking pretty sexy I bet, and thank God I hadn't yet taken down the curtains--to the bathroom doorway, removed my respirator, put it in another trash bag, took off one shoe, brushed the kaka off my foot, stepped partway into the clean bathroom, repeated the process with the other shoe and foot, tied the trash bag shut, slammed the door closed, and ran the rest of the way across the bathroom to the shower, where I took a very long, very hot shower with lots of soap and much scrubbing with a body brush.
Now, I know what y'all are thinking. Seven pounds of mouse shit? Really? It's not like you weighed it or anything. But that's where you're wrong. See, after showering and putting on nice clean clothes, I looked up the dangers of mouse doody and how to clean up mouse doody safely. Because I'm a geek like that. So after I napalmed the whole room with bleach water the next day--the CDC says wait a week, but I'm pretty sure the mouse poop is more likely seven years old than seven days old--and picked it up with a cat litter pooper-scooper and threw it in trash bags, I weighed the trash bags. Almost nine pounds. I figure wet doody weighs more than dry doody, so I subtracted a couple pounds. Therefore, seven pounds of mouse shit.
I can hardly wait to see what else might be up there in that ceiling...