When something dies under your house, just go outside

I'm shivering in my office. The rest of house is toasty, but the office window is open wide, and chill seeps in. A vent beneath my desk is open to the crawl space under the house, and something died  there. Right next to my vent, evidently. A bouquet of aromatic roses and a scented candle do not touch the stench, nor does the cold air from the open window.

Roses brought into the house to counteract the dead rat smell did not work. Look good, though.

Outside the fragrant flowers and erect young vegetables are bursting with life and sweetness. The strawberries and blueberries ripen, birds swoop and flit between the feeders and the garden, all ringed by a pretty country fence and surrounded by green mountains. We can see a smattering of homes on the hillside across the valley. In our neighbors' pastures, miniature horses frolic, and a field of ripe hay awaits cutting. Next door, a rosy-cheeked toddler delights her beautiful and loving young parents. Perfect.

But under our house, death.  There could be a dozen corpses under there, for all we know. PK has been waging a poison war against the gophers and moles that are tunneling through the garden and even under paving stones. Some tunnels lead under the house.

A gopher or mole did this, dislodging dirt and sand under
paving stones, which, incidentally, had just been repaired!

This isn't the first time a rodent or two or three has croaked just a few feet out of sight and reach. Several years ago PK inch-wormed his way to a far corner of the crawl space to retrieve the rotting rat  that revolted all who entered. No more crawl-space inch-worming for PK, and certainly not for moi. We'll open more windows or hire somebody with a hazmat suit. In the meantime, we'll go outside!

NEWS FLASH! Minutes after I wrote the above, a PEST EXTERMINATOR knocked on our door. Unbelievable that he showed up. In my university English lit classes, such an event would be considered deus ex machina, whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. (Wikipedia).

This type of intervention can't be written without peril, but when it happens in real life, you just rejoice and marvel. We hired the same guy last year to close up the crawl spaces, and he just happened by to see if we needed anything. At exactly the most opportune moment.


Oh my God! Yes!

He donned mask and coveralls and squeezed through a crawlspace entryway. Beneath my office, right below the vent, he found a fetid seeping rat carcass, which he shoved into a plastic bag and drove off with in his big black truck.
A couple days later, life is good and air is fresh here at my computer. In addition, our deliverance guy found and blocked the pest entry. We paid him $100 and everybody was happy, except the neighborhood rodents. 
A few country-living photos follow attesting to the general wholesomeness of the lifestyle. 
But David Lynch knows, and I know, that death, decay, and evil can strike—or seep—at any moment. For now, I enjoy the wholesomeness and hope for the best. Thank you, exterminator guy. Thank you, universe.

Out here, a few tractor fumes hardly interfere with the fresh air. 

Volunteer poppies delight the eye and spirit.

This is the first serious greens harvest of the season. By "serious" I mean we can't possibly eat all that chard and kale, and I must clean it, rip it into pieces, steam it, and shove it into freezer bags. I''ll be glad I did as chard and kale are winter staples.  The onions? The very first sweet onions thinned this season. 

It's difficult not to admire a vegetable that emerges from rocks. Go chard!!

The faithful perennials make me glad.

I love this rose bush. 

The late spring/early summer garden a couple weeks ago. Not a whiff of dead rat out here.
But as David Lynch and I know, death, decay and evil are never far away. I know we're not the only ones who notice.