Climbing The Walls

Most people, when they hear something hit the roof of their house, think "Oh, something just hit the roof of my house" and get on with their lives.

But when we bought this house, the entire back half was black-mold-squash-rotten, all from one tiny little twig (okay, a fairly large tree branch) that had hit and somehow stabbed through the roof, and everyone had just gone on with their lives. For years. And we spent two years and thirty-five thousand dollars making it habitable again.

So when I hear something hit the roof, I have to get a ladder.

And that's how, at 5:30 this morning, after apparently hitting the snooze button an inexplicable five times (and somehow switching it over from beep to radio), I wound up climbing out of bed and up onto the roof.

Only, for some reason, I decded that I didn't need a ladder.

It was a pretty healthy whomp, and sort of fleshy sounding. In fact, I was pretty sure that it was squirrels even before I heard them scurrying around up there. Tree branches don't scurry, and squirrels don't crash through the roof -- well, they certainly don't scurry around after they do, at any rate -- so it was a pretty safe bet that everything was fine and I didn't have to go and see.

But with things lke this you just know: the one time you don't go see will be the one time there's a little fluffy, twitching tail poking through the shingle and a whole mourning squirrel family scurrying around.

For some reason, I decided I had to sneak up on them. I was just awake, and I guess I thought seeing a blank roof wasn't good enough, I needed to actually set eyes on scurrying squirrels. So I skipped the ladder. Because, you know, ladders are so loud and otherwise a squirrel would have no idea that I was coming.

I went out the back, being careful not to let the screen door slam, and threw a leg over the rail. I managed to get myself up on the railing on one knee -- like I was proposing to my house -- and grasping the gutter for support, when I remembered about my back. I wasn't going to be able to haul myself up there, not even if there was a big, flaming (and, apparently, scurrying) asteroid to be examined.

But getting down and getting a ladder seemed just as pointless. So I held on to the gutter for dear life and, shakily, stood up. I was like Kilroy, peering nose and fingers over the edge of the roof, my feet wobbling like circus dogs on a rubber ball, my back begging me not to hurt it any more...

There was nothing up there.

I don't really remember getting down.