As you might have guessed, it can get real hot and swampy down there - and I'm not just talking about Louisiana. Sometimes the line just can't be found between the humidity and my own perspiration. One of the first things Ole Alex - a friend (and my employer) - said to me upon my relocation was "Gold Bond." Wise words and taken to heart - I have become a powdered dandy. Though my preference is generally for the less medicated though probably still chemically rich Johnson and Johnson's Baby Powder. So I'm really more of a powdered baby. Just a wet stinky baby in a bike shop. Business has been slow so I've had some time on my hands to contemplate the state of my cotton clothes.
Apparently this wasn't even the worst of the years, and to be perfectly honest. I found it fairly tolerable. Being hot and drenched in sweat - I like this. You can still feel like you accomplished something without even getting out of bed! And we wonder why it takes decades to get a street repaved down here.
As lethargic as the human population becomes, the critters get all sorts of exciteable. Now conveniently enough, I have spent the whole summer in a mood opposite to writing - allowing me to actually accrue some knowledge on the subject. I've saved the best for first which is also chronologically accurate.
The month of May here in the city is a special month for termites. It's breeding season. During this time, you can easily observe (and with difficulty avoid) swarms of termites on the prowl for love. It's a veritable airborne sex party around every streetlamp. They do it obviously to demonstrate their reckless abandon to us more prudish and self conscious humans. That being said, we are voyeurs by nature and so do gape in awe, revulsion and envy. The termite Orgy Cloud starts somewhere and moves it's way through different areas of the city, sharing their good vibes for a few intense days before moving elsewhere. Most of us want no part and so wait with apprehension for them to appear outside and inside your home. It is when they come through your neighborhood that good roommates will remind you to close the blinds and shut off the lights. Wait for the specter to pass.
Though sometimes you become part of the swinging mix whether you like it or not. Such as happened in my house. Little did my new roommate know what was to appear as the welcoming committee. They were on the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor. Thankfully slow moving, we were able to manually destroy hordes of copulating mates. This quickly became too disgusting to continue so I went out for some spray which was conveniently located in abundance not 5ft from the entrance of Home Depot.
With the termites finally settled into what I guess is a yearlong postcoital stupor, we were able to get on with our lives.
Until the raccoons moved in. They chose the luxurious space beneath Madeleine's floorboards causing quite a ruckus. Some of you who follow my super-active facebook page might have been aware of this development. During most of the month of July, we would listen to them chatter away, loudly and obnoxiously, right there under where she keeps her mountain of laundry. Having never dealt with this issue before, the three of us were somewhat at a loss. Our first attempts to alert them to our displeasure mostly involved us drunkenly stomping on the floorboards and yelling at them. WE pay rent, afterall.
We knew they were entering and exiting from under the house which is raised about 3 feet off the ground. So being the little problem solver I am I decided to try my hand at trap building just like how I learned in all those years I wasn't in the Boy Scouts. I took a milk crate and tied a couple bricks on top for weight. I propped it up outside on a stick that was planted in a dish full of enticing bait which was a helping of peanut butter crackers and like 20 crushed up Tylenol PM tablets. My plan was for the racoon to nibble away at the crackers, knocking against the stick and trapping him. Then, having become groggy if not comatose from the sleeping pills, I could then collect and displace the cute little bastard somewhere far away.
That didn't work.
What did end up working was something of a struggle and fairly invasive as far as house maintenance goes. I drilled several holes in the floor and walls of Madeleine's room. Using a squeeze bottle, I liberally distributed ammonia down said holes, sealing them up with caulking material afterwards. And this worked! The first time I did it the raccoons got the hell out of there in a vocal fury. I could see the floorboards move as they hustled their way out of her room...and on over into the same space in our neighbor's side of the house. Thier home is the mirror opposite to ours with a shared wall down the middle of the building. I guess that wall doesn't include the space under the floorboards. So I packed up my drill, ammonia, mask, goggles and gloves and went and did the same thing on their side. It has been about a month now, if not longer, since we've heard them. Knock on wood, this trial has too has been resolved.
Besides that, the summer has just been hot as shit and kinda slow. It thunderstorms on average a few times a week down here during the season. Plenty of water to go around as most of you have seen on the news. New Orleans escaped the worst of it, and with no hurricanes suspected of making landfall right on top of us it seems we've have a summer unscathed.
