You’d think that after 26 years of practice, I’d be able to chew without shredding the inside of my mouth. The inside of my lower lip is still tender where I chomped down on it this morning while eating a donut.
Bleh.
Dale and I seem to have crappy luck with apartments. We’ve lived in three together now, and weird stuff just seems to happen.
Our First Apartment
Shortly after moving in, I saw what appeared to be a twig sticking out of an air vent that was near the floor. Closer examination determined it was a dead bat. Unfortunately, I had to deal with it, as Spritel kept trying to chew on it. Poor thing had been dead a while. I had to get Dale to pry it out as my stomach couldn’t handle the cracking noises it was making.
There was something (or things) in the air vents. You could hear them scurrying back and forth. Spritel used to run along the walls chasing the sound, or just sit and stare. We had one cabinet that contained Ramen and a thousand plastic grocery bags. We found the packages chewed open and a huge hole in the corner that opened into the wall. We called maintenance. They came out and patched half the hole.
One night after Dale had gone to bed, I heard rustling in that cabinet. I opened the door. Spritel wandered up to investigate.
Silence.
Then, the faintest rustle.
Instantly, Spritel lunged into the cabinet and yanked out half the bags. A small brown furry thing tumbled out. Spritel immediately attacked as I started screaming. I have this inexplicable fear of mice and rats. (How girly.) And I thought it was a rat. Dale came running out of the bedroom.
When I stopped doing the eek eek dance, I saw that Spritel’s victim was actually a baby squirrel. It would try to play dead, Spritel would pause, it would move, and the attack was on again. I found a pair of Dale’s leather gloves. “You get Spritel!! I’ll get the squirrel!” It took several tries, but Dale finally got the cat off the poor thing. (For the record, I’d have done the same even if it was a rat or mouse.)
I had an easy time picking the squirrel up ’cause it was frozen in shock. It really didn’t seem that injured, just a few scratches. I didn’t know what to do so I carried it to the balcony (which was only 4-5 feet above the ground) and let it go. It must not have been that badly in shock as it took off for the woods at top speed. Spritel had gotten away from Dale and chased me across the living room. After the squirrel was gone, I turned around and there were bloody cat footprints across the carpet.
The wood-floored entry, where most of the attack occurred, was splattered in blood. It was on the carpet and on the walls. I called maintenance and left a semi-hysterical message. Dale recaptured Spritel and forced him into the tub to clean the blood off his feet while I cleaned the carpet and foyer. I thought I was going to be sick. I can’t stand seeing someone or something else’s blood, and the smell was so strong. Not much I could do about the white wall.
The next day, while we were at work, maintenance came and patched the rest of hole in the cabinet and painted over the blood on the wall. When I got home, I found a fan-shaped splatter they’d missed. They also placed glue traps in the vents and assured us that they were putting screens up over the external vents.
Several weeks later, we were awakened at 4am by a terrible racket. Another of those baby squirrels landed in the glue trap in the vent above our bed. After a brief call, a sleepy maintenance guy arrived. He removed a vent cover and extracted this pitiful creature stuck to the glue trap. I gave the maintenance guy a shopping bag to put it in, and it flipped upside down and got stuck to the bag.
Worried, I asked the guy, “You aren’t going to kill it, are you?”
“What? No…..”
I knew he was lying, but I didn’t know what else to do. That was three years ago, and I still feel guilty about those squirrels. We never did see anymore after that, but to the day we moved out two years later, we’d still hear them in the vents.
Our neighbors in that complex complained of snakes. I never saw those. We did get lots of toads, from fingertip-sized to palm-sized. Our building was built into a hill, and you had to go down stairs to get to the bottom level, where Dale and I lived. Whenever I found a toad down on our level, I carried it back upstairs. Dale couldn’t stand that and would ask me not to do it, but I felt bad for the toads.
On another weird note, we had recurring plumbing problems. We had two toilets, and they would both randomly get plugged. On occasion, they’d back up and overflow. It wasn’t us, really. We rarely used the smaller bath ’cause the litterbox was in there, and it would back up after days of not being touched. One day, I discovered foul crud in the bottom of our tub. After another visit by maintenance, I learned that my apartment, literally, was the lowest point on the sewer line. So any time there was a back up or a clog (even in the laundry room across the hall), we were the first to be hit.
That’s just nasty.
About a year after we moved in, two girls moved in next door and brought with them Satan’s Pooch. This little shit of a white dog barked constantly. I do mean constantly. With no provocation. It would start about 7am and continue ’til like 11pm. If the chicks were home, we got the added bonus of hearing them yell, “Shut up, Yoyo!” Two big dogs lived down the hall and never made a sound until that little beast arrived. There were repeated complaints to the leasing office. Someone left a note (that wasn’t even nasty, but it threatened to call the police) on their door. For some reason they thought I wrote it, wrote a nasty response, and taped it to my door. Really pissed, I wrote back, explained I wasn’t the original author but supported what she’d said, and taped it up across from their door. After that, any time Dale or I saw either of them, we exchanged Evil Eyes. I guess mine was the stronger because they were finally asked to move out after 6 months.
Our Second Apartment
The next apartment Dale and I shared was in south Austin. Since we’d moved down jobless and were living off savings, we got a tiny one bedroom apartment. I don’t know what was up with the leasing office there, but they came up with an excuse every month for the 6 months we were there to enter our apartment. We had fire inspectors in at least twice. Exterminators two or three times. Then after we notified them that we weren’t going to renew our lease, they notified us they were going to show our apartment to prospective renters while we weren’t there. What the fuck?? The place was a terrible mess. Literally half our belongings were stacked in boxes along one wall behind our sofa. I had a strong urge to stay home the day they specified, and deadbolt the door. Or, leave a note taped to the wall for them to see as soon as they opened the door. It would say something like, “Fuck you, this apartment sucks.” Instead, we just moved to north Austin.
Our Third Apartment
In most regards, our current apartment is really nice. Before we moved in, I asked if they ever showed a currently occupied apartment to prospective tenants. “What? Of course not!” We were also assured that short of an emergency, they don’t enter our apartment unless we request it. They’ve been very good about that. But, I don’t care for some of the policies of the management. A few months ago, all tenants got a notice that read in part like this:
We have just learned that one of our residents or occupants may have been convicted of a sex-related crime or other crime of violence. We have asked the person to immediately vacate. If the person in question will not voluntarily agree to vacate in the next three days, we will be filing an eviction lawsuit. Until the person in question is evicted, we recommend that you be especially cautious.
Then it went on to list “safety tips and precautions.” This letter really disturbed me. It seemed alarmist and inappropriate. I suppose the management wanted to cover it’s corporate ass, but this was a tactless way to do it. Don’t get me wrong; I have absolutely no sympathy for sexual predators, but by that I mean child molesters, rapists, and such. What I would have preferred… I don’t know what I would have preferred, but these days, peeing off your front porch while drunk can constitute a sex crime. Perhaps something more discreet.
I think what upset me is that it seemed someone was being forced out of a home based upon possible criminal activity. While I certainly wouldn’t want to find out my neighbor is a convicted rapist, I really wouldn’t care if it was a single drunken pee incident. I have friends who’ve done that. But now I had to worry and wonder. I even checked the Texas Sex Offender Registration database. That listed a dozen people (and their crimes) within two miles of where I live, but no one in my apartment complex.
Dale felt much the way I did. Once when he had to go by the leasing office and one of the women there commented on it, he let them know how crappy he thought their action was. I mean, was it even legal to evict someone based upon a possible conviction? I fumed about it for a while, but it faded away, and we didn’t hear any more until today.
This time we received this letter:
[X] We have recently been informed that a break in of a motor vehicle has occurred in our community . (blah blah, be safe)
OR
[ ] We have just learned that one of our residents or occupants may have been convicted of a sex-related crime or other crime of violence. We have asked the person to immediately vacate. If the person in question will not voluntarily agree to vacate in the next three days, we will be filing an eviction lawsuit. Until the person in question is evicted, we recommend that you be especially cautious.
OR
[ ] We have just learned that one of our residents or occupants may have been convicted or placed under some type of court order regarding a sex-related crime or other crime of violence. Unfortunately, the person in question has refused to vacate and there has been no default under his or her lease that permits eviction. Therefore, we have given notice that the resident’s lease which expires on ____________ , ______________ , will not be renewed. Until then, we recommend that you be especially cautious.
(This paragraph at least lets us know that even if the management can’t legally evict someone, they can still make his or her life miserable when the lease is up.)
Then followed a page and a half of safety tips.
This is just weird. And disturbing. Do incidents like these happen with such frequency that the leasing office has pre-typed form letters? And it’s so bad, that rather than have someone dig up the appropriate letter, they put three check boxes and some fill-in-the-blanks on a page?! And… and… they copyrighted this form!!! There it is at the bottom of the page, little © symbol and all…. Has anyone else out there in Texas gotten anything like this?
I checked the database again. Still no one in my complex listed.
Oh, and both of our toilets here randomly clog up for some reason.
The webcam pic doesn’t really do Bueno justice. Actually, I think its name is Way-Loh, but Dale asked if I’d mistakenly gotten the Spanish version.
Maybe in the future. If not, you’ll still got a friend in her. 
