by Jenny Lawson
He was right. And sometimes, if you’re really lucky, they help you dig them back up.
EPILOGUE: Hailey and Harry decided they needed to take a picture of Laura and me after we were finished “gardening.” It is the single worst and best picture I own.
Shovel, Laura, shovel for dwarves (apparently), me.
It’s like some kinda fucked-up American Gothic portrait, but with fewer pitchforks and more rappers. If there was a song for this chapter it would be the Golden Girls theme. But less douchey, and with a kick-ass drum solo in the middle. And the lyrics would be like “You would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say, ‘Thank you for helping me dig up my dead dog.’” That shit’s Grammy gold, y’all.
Several weeks later, a deliveryman came to the door with a package for me to sign for, and I was so excited because I thought it was a scarf I’d ordered, but then I opened it and realized it was a box of Barnaby Jones Pickles’s ashes. You’re really never prepared for packages like that. But really, you should be. Some days are good, and some days are bad, and some days are the days you get a dead dog in the mail. They can’t all be winners.
Later we disposed of some of Barnaby Jones Pickles’s ashes in the Devil’s Backbone where we live, because it’s apparently very haunted by Indians and Spanish monks, and I’d like to think it would be less horrifying if people drove up on the ghost of a lone Indian, grudgingly accompanied by a smiling pug who was just so damn happy to see you.
You’re welcome, Texas.
I’m Going to Need an Old Priest and a Young Priest
The following is a series of actual events pulled from my journal that led to me believe that our home was possessed by demons and/or built over an Indian burial ground. (Also, please note that the first part of this chapter actually happens just before the previous chapter, and the last part of it happens just after it. This could be viewed as “clunky and awkward,” but I prefer to think of it as “intellectually challenging and chronologically surreal. Like if Memento was a book. About dead dogs and vaginas and puppets made of squirrel corpses.” You can feel free to use that quote if you’re reviewing this chapter, or if you’re a student and your teacher asks you, “What was the author trying to say here?” That was it. That’s what I was trying to say. That and “Use condoms if you’re going to have sex, for God’s sake. There are a lot of skanks out there.” That’s not really covered in this book, but it’s still good advice.)
Let’s get started.
You know what would suck? If, after you moved, you suddenly remembered that you might have left a cigar box with a ten-year-old joint in your garage, and your husband doesn’t remember whether he saw it, and you don’t know whether the movers found it and packed it for you, and so now you may or may not have illegal drugs somewhere in your house. And you want to hire a drug dog to come sniff it out so that your kid doesn’t find the box one day, but you don’t know anyone who rents out drug dogs. And you kind of just want to call the cops to have them come find it, and you’ll just tell them that they can have it if they find it, but you don’t know whether they’ll arrest you or not, even though technically you’re just trying to rid yourself of illegal drugs. This is all hypothetical. It’s also the reason we’re losing the war on drugs. Also, is pot illegal if it’s expired? And how do you know whether it’s expired? These are all questions I’d ask the police if I weren’t so afraid to call them.
Holy shit, y’all. I just looked up and there was a fox in our yard. A fucking fox. I know this is no big deal to most people, but it kind of blows my mind that we live so far out in the country that there are actual foxen that live in our hills. Also, spell-check refuses to recognize the legitimacy of “foxen,” even though it is clearly a word. One ox, two oxen. One fox, two foxen. This is all basic linguistic stuff here.
Victor and I are having a huge argument about whether or not to feed the foxen. Victor says yes, because they’re adorable and—according to the neighbors—are quite tame. I say no, because we have a fat little pug who likes to frolic outside occasionally and I don’t want to see him eaten. I thought we were on the same page about the fox, but then Victor went and threw an apple at it. And I was all, “What the fuck? We don’t feed the foxen,” and he said, “I was throwing the apple at it to chase it away,” but Victor is a tremendous liar, and he didn’t go to pick up the apple, probably because he knows that foxen love apple cider. Also, everything I know about foxen I learned from Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was a great movie, but I suspect was not entirely fact-driven. This is probably all obvious even without the explanation.
Actual fox in my backyard. Looking for cider, I assume.
The foxen have not given up and hang around the backyard like a pack of loitering teenagers who need to get a damn job. I scream, “Get off my lawn,” but they just look at me inquisitively and roll over on their backs like they want their tummies scratched. I am not scratching your tummies, foxen.
Victor has fallen for their clever ploys and is sneaking food out to the backyard so he can feed them. Because Victor thinks I’m stupid. He goes through the fridge and carefully pulls out perfectly good sausages and eggs and loudly exclaims that they’ve gone bad, and then he throws them out the back door and watches for movement. He says he’s “composting,” but I’ve called him on his bullshit. “You can’t feed them,” I explain again. “That’s like chumming for foxen. I’m not going to bait the hole and then put Barnaby Jones Pickles out there. We’ll come out to see a fox chewing on the end of an empty leash.”
“BUT I WANT TO SEE ONE UP CLOSE,” Victor yells.
“They look like cats,” I say. “Like grayish, plotting cats.” He refused to believe me, so the next day we drove past a buzzard eating one on the side of the road, and I was all, “LOOK! FOX!” Then I smugly said, “There. Now you’ve seen one. Not that exciting, is it?” And Victor pointed out that the dead animal was a cat, and I was like, “Exactly. THAT’S HOW ALIKE THEY LOOK.” Also, it might have actually been a cat. It’s hard to tell what buzzards are eating when you drive past them at sixty miles an hour.
The foxen have got to go. Barnaby Jones Pickles seems to think they’re friendly kitties and keeps trying to run over to them to play. Luckily his dog run goes only so far, so the foxen just stand beyond his grasp and stare at him patiently, like he’s someone’s child who needs to be running along now. They ignore him and don’t seem to be a threat, but at this point I’m a little embarrassed at Barnaby’s exuberance and desperately obvious desire to play with foxen, who clearly think they’re better than him. Those foxen are being assholes and I will not stand for their attitude.
My friend Karen told me that when they have a fox problem in England, the man of the house just pees all around the perimeter, because there’s something in male urine that scares the shit out of foxes for some reason. It seems legit, so I tell Victor that I need him to pee in a circle around our house to protect the dog. Victor walks out of the room and locks himself in his office. I can almost hear him shaking his head through the door. In retrospect, I probably could have started with more context.
I was just reading this chapter to a friend and she stopped me and said, “Wait. Didn’t Barnaby die in the last chapter? I’m so confused. Why are you trying to protect your dead dog?” So I’m going to pop in here again to point out (again) that this part all happened before Barnaby died. I wasn’t trying to protect my dead zombie dog from judgmental, loitering foxen. Because that would be crazy.
It’s been days and the foxen seem to love sleeping just out of reach of Barnaby. Victor says this just shows how tame they are, but I’m pretty sure they’re just trying to give him some sort of airborne fox disease. “JUST GO PEE!” I scream desperately at Victor. “If you loved Barnaby Jones you would be peeing all OVER him right now.”
Victor looked up. “Do you ever even listen to the things you say out loud?”
“Well, I try not to,” I admitted. “But in this case? I’m right. You need to go
pee all over the backyard. And possibly the front yard. And on the dog.”
Victor shook his head. “I’m not peeing in the yard. We don’t have a fence. That’s how you get arrested. I don’t even have that much pee.”
“YOU KNOW WHAT?” I said, my arms crossed angrily. “FINE. I’m trying to save our dog, and you’re hoarding pee. PEE HOARDER.”
“I’m not HOARDING pee,” Victor yelled. “I’m flushing it down the toilet. WHERE IT BELONGS.”
“You’re WASTING IT.”
“You’re supposed to waste it. THAT’S WHY IT’S CALLED ‘WASTE.’”
“Great,” I answered. “I’m sure Barnaby Jones will be very comforted knowing that he died of fox disease because of semantics.”
I called my mom to ask whether Daddy could drive a few hours to come pee around my house for protection, but she said he couldn’t, because it’s a really busy season for taxidermy. But she said if I “really needed it” she could probably mail me some. I considered it, but then said no, because first of all, that is a package I don’t ever want to sign for, and second, because I can already predict that Victor will be all pissed off (no pun intended) that I asked my father for help protecting us from foxen, and then Victor will be all, “I AM THE ALPHA MALE IN THIS HOUSE AND NO ONE IS PEEING ON IT BUT ME.” Then the next time my dad comes over they’ll end up in a pissing contest. Literally. Except Victor is too competitive and he’d probably push it too far and would be like, “Oh, yeah? Forget pee; I’ll throw up everywhere!” and I’ll be all, “Your overachievement is gross.” We never had these problems when we lived in the suburbs.
Last week Barnaby Jones died valiantly of a wasp sting/snakebite/shark attack. It was awful and I still can’t write about it without crying. I loved that damn dog. The foxen have been cleared of any suspicion of involvement in his death. By Victor. Who I think might be biased, since he seems set on taming them and creating a fox circus. This will not stand. Honestly, I know the foxen aren’t responsible for Barnaby’s death, but I suspect that if Victor weren’t feeding them all the time, they would have been hungry enough to eat the wasp/snake/shark that killed Barnaby. I have forbidden Victor to throw food in the backyard. He says I’m crazy and that he stopped doing that a long time ago. Three hours later I saw a fox walk by the bedroom window eating a leftover hamburger. Mother. Fucker.
Our house seems to be infested with scorpions. Awesome. They’re not the fatal kind, but they hurt like hell if they sting you, and they’re creepy and were made by Satan. Fortunately, cats are immune to scorpion venom (fun fact!), so they’re safe. Unfortunately, the cats don’t understand that I am not immune to scorpion venom, and so instead of killing them they just bat them toward my bare feet while I’m watching TV. Probably because they want me to join in the fun. Or because these cats are assholes. I’m leaning toward the latter, because these same cats just murdered Hailey’s pet frogs today. It was a goddamn massacre. First snakes, then the frogs, then a plague of scorpions. I’m starting to suspect we’ve reached the end of days, or have built our home on an Indian graveyard. I keep searching for the dead bodies supposedly buried in my neighborhood, but if I don’t find them soon I’m going to just have to assume someone built this house over them.
The exterminators have come to spray for scorpions four times in the last month, and it’s not working. I read online that chickens eat scorpions, so I consider buying some, until Victor reminds me of the foxen. So, basically I can’t get chickens to take care of the scorpion infestation, because the chickens will be eaten by the fox infestation. I think I need a lion to eat the foxen. Except we can’t have a lion, because of deed restrictions.
Frankly, I’m not even sure what the point was of moving out to the country if you aren’t allowed to have lions.
The exterminator says the scorpions are probably all coming from the attic, because that’s where scorpions like to live, so I went on an Internet chat room for advice.
INTERNET GUY: You need to buy some ducks. Ducks eat the shit out of scorpions.
ME: But the scorpions are in my attic.
INTERNET GUY: You get about five hundred ducks up there and you’re not gonna have to worry about any more scorpions left in your attic.
ME: Yeah . . . I guess. But then I’ll have five hundred ducks in my attic.
INTERNET GUY: You got a gun?
And that’s exactly why you shouldn’t ask for advice on the Internet.
Victor bought a giant bag of diatomaceous earth that he’s going to use to kill all the scorpions. Apparently, it’s dirt that makes scorpions commit suicide, and it sounds like something wizards would sell you.
“Did they teach you how to pronounce ‘Avada Kedavra’ when you bought it?” I ask. Victor just stares at me. Probably because he’s never read any of the Harry Potter books. “Sorry,” I explain. “It’s just that I’m pretty sure you just bought something made up by sorcerers. Were they all out of magic beans?”
“It’s not magic. It’s just ground-up shells,” Victor says. “Scorpions really hate it, apparently.”
“Ah,” I say. “Well, that explains why you never see scorpions vacationing by the seaside.”
The scorpions have all left the attic. For the house. I’m ordering a flamethrower to keep beside the bed. Just a small one, though, because I’m aware of fire safety. I bought the kind you use to make the top of crème brûlée crunchy. And a lot of lighter fluid. I still shoo spiders and moths out of the house with plastic cups, but these scorpions are going to die painfully.
Neighbors advised that we should place the feet of our beds in mason jars to keep the scorpions from crawling into bed with us at night, as glass is the only surface they’re unable to climb. I consider how much it would cost to cover everything in the house with a layer of glass, but Victor convinces me the glass couch would leave questionable marks on sweaty summer days. I add “have glass shoes made” to my to-do list so that I can keep scorpions from crawling up me when I stand in one place for too long. I suspect Cinderella had an undisclosed problem with scorpion infestation in her home too. Although knowing her, she was probably breeding them. That’s what I’d do if I were forced to be a slave in my own house. Plus, she made the rats and mice and pigeons design clothes for her, so she probably taught the scorpions to do tricks too. Maybe to hold hand mirrors for her with their pincers. Or to punish the lazier mice who would rather look for cheese than make a sash. Cinderella was kind of a bitch, now that I think about it.
Today the exterminator came out to spray for scorpions again, and he left a note saying that he found an enormous snakeskin next to our house. Then I screamed, “EVERYTHING IN THE COUNTRY WANTS TO KILL YOU,” and Victor told me to go lie down. But then I went to go look at the snakeskin, and I was all, “This is a used paper towel.” Then Victor said, “Dude. That’s totally a snakeskin that’s been shed. Look at the diamond scale pattern,” and I was all, “That’s a textured diamond weave to absorb more wetness. You can tell it’s a paper towel because snakeskins aren’t square. Or perforated.” And I spread it out on the ground and then he was all, “Huh. That is a fucking paper towel. I think we need a new exterminator.”
We’re probably not going to survive the year.
My foot. My welcome mat. My uninvited guest. (A mostly dead poisonous centipede.) I also found four scorpions that same day. I’m probably going to die here.
I’m still focused on finding the family cemetery in our subdivision, and I’ve taken to wandering in the empty fields, looking for headstones. A neighbor I hadn’t met yet pulled up to introduce herself and told me to be careful hiking because of all the snakes. I thanked her, but explained that I’m not a hiker and was just looking around for dead bodies. Victor says I’m not allowed to talk to the neighbors without him anymore.
Last night Victor was out of town, so there was no one to keep me from freaking out when something large started violently knocking on my bedroom wall at midnight. I called the exterminator to complain that something very lo
ud was hurling itself at my bedroom wall. He said it was probably a field mouse trapped in the wall, and I said, “No. It sounds crazy-dangerous and huge. It sounds like a demon is throwing a bear into the wall. Or a chupacabra . . . with a handgun.” And the pest guy was all, “A chewpa-what?” Because HE’D NEVER HEARD OF A CHUPACABRA. Then I was like, “Wait . . . seriously? Are you new?” Because that’s exactly the kind of shit I expect my pest control guy to know. Then I called Victor and I was all, “Okay, our pest control guy doesn’t know what a chupacabra is,” and he said, “Really? We live in Texas. That shit should be on the exam,” and I was like, “EXACTLY.” This whole week is being a tremendous asshole.
My bedroom smells terrible. It’s been a week since all those awful sounds stopped, and it’s become obvious that the chupacabra has died in the wall. The exterminator crawled up in the attic and said he thinks it was a squirrel that fell into a hole in between the walls, and that he was going to try to “hook him” from the attic. After twenty minutes he said he just couldn’t reach him, so he gave up. He also told me there’s a bunch of dirt in the attic we might want to check out.
Then the next day another dead-squirrel fisherman from the same company came by, because he’d heard about it and he wanted to try to hook it. So basically my house is like a giant claw-crane game, and the prize is a dead squirrel. After about thirty minutes I started to suspect that he’d been murdered by the remaining chupacabras, but turns out that he’d just given up and dumped a bottle of Rat Sorb into the wall. That’s a real thing, y’all. Rat Sorb. To absorb the smell of dead animals. That’s on the label. So apparently I just live with a dead squirrel in my bedroom wall for the rest of my life. The exterminator says this is very common and that all houses have desiccated dead animals in their walls. On the positive side, the next time I feel intimidated at a fancy dinner party I can remind myself that there are probably dead animals all over the place. It’s like when you have to speak in front of a group and so you imagine them all naked. Except that the dead animals in the wall aren’t imaginary and are actually naked. I can’t tell whether that makes it better or worse.