This is *NOT* a 1991 Anthony Hopkins | Jodie Foster film!

But it *IS* a scary looking beast sitting at my front door.

For the past four days or so, our house has been smelling real musty. The kind where you vacuum the entire carpeted house with a 25 year old hoover, and you end up smelling dirty rugs at the end of the cleaning. Almost like no amount of aerosol will mask the fact your top of the line sucker ain't doing it's job no more. 

Add insult to injury with the fact the house isn't getting cool. No matter how my mother keeps running to the thermostat to fix the temperature.

So we're eating lunch today and I'm like "the smell is starting to get to me. I haven't said anything all week, but the air in this place isn't feeling so clean". She said she knows, she's been smelling it too, but doesn't know what to do. The air conditioning unit is on and running, but it's taking it's time trying to cool the place down. 

Mind you, we're on a first floor condo unit. We have a 3 bedroom, 2 bath condo with a giant living area as the main section of the house. It's not giant per se, but it's big enough to have a couch and sectional in, plus a wall entertainment center. Which is just a couple of shelves built against the wall, a space for the TV and some bottom cabinets for the movies. It's not a million dollars, but my mother thinks it's pretty. All in all, the square footage for this place is about 1800. 

I asked her if the pipe out front has been cleaned lately. It's been in the past where if the A/C isn't working so great, we have to take a wetvac and suction out / clear the pipe. She said she thinks it's been dripping, but isn't so sure. So I grabbed the shopvac and went outside. 

She followed suit and when she went to shut the front door, she found a visitor on the wall.

This dude is just waiting for the opportune time to fly right into the house, unnoticed. Considering he was close enough to the doorbell, that was probably going to be the next step. Lay on the buzzer, get us to check the door. Open it up, see who's out there. No one? Sure, no one.. because this guy flew right into the house and now we've got to figure out how in the hell to get him out. 

That didn't happen, but out luck, it would. 

Just like when we lived in Brockton and she made me chase after a little brown field mouse for 45 minutes... all through the top floor of our house... with two cans of Raid. Almost an hour of panicking plus depleting both insect repellent bottles, the mouse flopped / seized to death in the kitchen. I then had to run downstairs, get in the garage, get a shovel, run back through the house, upstairs, shovel the mouse and take it to the backyard and toss it in the woods. 

I still have nightmares. 

And I haven't forgiven her for it. 

If you want to know inhumane ways to kill pesky animals, I'm sure I can offer you all kinds of advice. Although I do not... I repeat... I DO NOT condone it. As this was about 8pm on a Friday night, the option of calling someone for help was not the best, as we'd lose sight of the animal before a friend came. So... my mother grabs one can from under the sink and the other from the hall closet, almost throws them at me, and off I go. Chasing after something that could fit in my hands. 

Anyway... yeah. I don't suggest doing any of that... killing in the name of getting it out of the house. I'm sure there would have been other ways to shake it, but at the time, no one thinks.

All photos on this post taken with an iPhone 11. Edited in Photoshop just to put my name on it. I've still not charged the battery for my Canon, and since we were outside trying to fix the air conditioning, I wasn't about to run in and out repeatedly. 

Getting back to the pictures... allegedly it's a moth. I don't know what kind, because there are a lot of different ones that can be found around here. But my mother looked at a picture of one online and said they look a like. I don't even want to go back and try to find the name because I don't want to mislabel it. Too many commonalities with other insects. 

So... as I submit this, the house feels cooler and I haven't ventured out to the living room yet. But I'm sure the smell has dissipated. 

Until the next big adventure in my daily routines...

Cheers;