Attic Dwelling Tree Rats

Sooo, its been a while since something really strange has happened at The Penthouse (Formerly The Deuce). Which of course means that Sapphire and I were long overdue.

Day 1: So about two weeks ago, I came home from work to find a few flies inside the house. Annoying but no big deal. Killed a few, did some homework, and called it a day.

Day 2: The next day, I woke up and went to work then class. When I got home I was met with a rather unpleasant odor and the flies had multiplied exponentially. I was greeted at the top of the stairs by Sapphire who was not feelin the smell either. I'm talkin about 20-30 flies flying around the place. Major Problem. So we start walking around, looking for a source for the smell and the flies. It seemed like the smell was worse in our front porch room. And the flies were everywhere. It was evident that something had died. We looked all over the house and decided that it must be in the attic. We live in a nice neighborhood and there are a lot of squirrels crawling around outside so I assumed that's what it was.
Sapphire, being much braver than me, decided to go up in the attic and see if the smell was worse up there. She opened the door and crawled up the ladder to go up in the attic and before she even stepped foot in there she made a strange discovery. Next to the ladder was an apple, an empty water bottle, and some flowers. Oh hell to the naw. She hurried down the ladder and looked at me with confusion on her face. Well u know I wasn't bout to crawl up there. Given our luck, we very well could have a squatter in our attic.
In order to get rid of the flies, we decided to make an emergency trip to Walmart. We were up in Walmart gettin whatever we could to get rid of the flies. Not only were they super annoying, but they made it hard to concentrate and as a professional procrastinator I of course had an assignment due the next day. We bought a bunch of air fresheners and fly tape. We wanted one of those electrical fly zappers but of course they didn't have one. Turned out that the fly tape was useless anyway but I digress.
On our way back we called up some of our male classmates, E-Newt and Banana Republic to come check the attic for us and make sure that there wasn't a squatter in the attic. When we got home we were also met by K. Pho who needed to use our wireless. Long story short, all 3 guys ended up in our attic. They made several interesting discoveries: 1) No squatter. 2) The apple was a fake Christmas decoration. 3) There was also a single crutch and typewriter up there. 4) The smell was definitely stronger up in the attic. 5) Rat poop. At the mention of rat poop, Sapphire immediately called the landlord's office and left a message about the situation.

Day 3: Of course they didn't return the phone call so I called again and they sent the smelly handyman to our house. According to Sapphire, he searched the attic and didn't find anything but said that there was definitely something dead up there. Uh, no duh. By now, our place smelled so bad we had to close off certain rooms to keep the smell secluded to certain rooms and not contaminate the rest of the house. But it still smelled awful. And now the kitchen smelled the worst. The handyman basically just told us that we'd have to live with it cuz there was nothing he could do. Not cool. So I decided to call up the landlord that night on his personal cell phone and talk to him personally. Naturally he didn't answer but I left him a nice little message. The next morning I got a phone call from a pest removal guy.

Day 4: The pest removal guy went up in the attic and almost immediately found the culprit: a dead squirrel. Or as I like to call him, The Attic Dwelling Tree Rat. He deoderized the area (directly above the kitchen) in the attic and in the kitchen. Basically, what happened was that somehow the squirrel got up into the attic and couldn't get out so he died. And the rotting body formed maggots which is where the flies came from. He set some traps up outside the house and was able to find 4 more squirrels and keep them out of the house.

So, the house doesn't really smell anymore and all the flies are gone. Just another crazy day in VA. I'm seriously starting to think that the City of Norfolk hates me. I already don't get along with squirrels. K. Pho was over here the other night and he said that he thought he heard something crawling around either in the ceiling or between the walls. Probably another squirrel. Great. Sometimes I wish I made this stuff up ...