A man came to inspect the house for mold yesterday. He called the different molds by names, as if he knew them personally. I suppose you get to know a thing intimately when you see it on a regular basis. The names rolled off his tongue with ease, long scientific names sounding like the children of foreigners from strange lands. When a word or name gets beyond four syllables, my mind gives up on it. I must have a storehouse of four syllable, incomplete words in my brain. Its like the one corner of our garage where we keep left-over, little stubs of  two by fours that are too short to use, but we hate to just throw them out.

He'll be back today, the mold man. Has to don a sort of space suit and go up in the attic. "Watch out for the raccoon poop!" I told him yesterday. There were five raccoons in the attic last summer, a mom and her four babies. The kids grew up there. It was there playhouse until they were evicted. I borrowed a live trap from Charlie Brown and set it on the ground, close to the downspout they used to climb up and down from ground to roof.

The first night, I caught two babies at one go, using sardines as bait; the second night, a black cat. On the third try, I got mom. She ripped up all the grass under the trap, clawing between the cage floor wires. There was a dry spell after that. No more cats, no more coons. Several days into it, it occurred to me that the other two babies weren't coming down because they were waiting for mom. Maybe she carried them up and down the spouting in her teeth and they couldn't do it on their own.

Since they weren't coming down, I had to go up with the trap. They came out onto the roof from the attic when they heard me with the ladder against the drain spout. One of the babies walked right up to me while I was still on the ladder. They are pretty naive about dangerous animals, including humans, when still very young.  I shooed it away. Don't know if the young ones can have rabies or not, but I wasn't taking chances.

After catching one, I waited for the cover of darkness to take it to a nature park and let it loose. My mother went along. Unwittingly, she was about to embark on her first crime, at 84 years of age. Walking back to the car after the stealthy release, we were accosted by a park ranger. He said it was against the law to release raccoons anywhere but the locale in which they were caught. We were supposed to catch the critter, then let him go in the same spot. Its about the same as giving them squatters rights to your attic. And what a fun game it would be to catch and release; catch and release. Race you to the rooftop little buddy! Sure hope you're comfortable up there in my attic. How were the sardines? Enough mustard for you?

So, in addition to old raccoon poop (Emelie called it "antique poop of raccoon". I love it when people who were not born into the English language environment create fresh ways to say what they are thinking.), there just might be some mold up there as well. I learned a lot from our mold man. A fungus only needs moisture and a food source to take hold. And it eats most anything: paper, wood, gypsum board, the dead skin of old people who sit in one spot too long. With three of us senior citizens living under one roof, we try to keep on the move, indoors and out (the buzzards, you know).

Well, I've said my piece for this blog.

Oh! I have to tell you just this one thing more: I read the first paragraph of this to my wife, Emelie. She closed her eyes while I was reading and then told me that I was putting her to sleep, and that all my stories put her to sleep. Its true! When she has insomnia, I tell her an impromptu story and she falls asleep within minutes, no matter what the reason for her inability to nod off; even if she's been awake for hours. I feel pretty proud and indispensible!

Geronimo!!!!!