continued from Photostory Friday and Boo Radley

Please click here for Chapter One: What's all the Racket? If you haven't already read it!

Chapter 2: Livin' with Boo

Life at 632 N Brainard calmed down for a couple of weeks. Life with Boo wasn't so bad. He usually only made appearances at night, so I just made sure I didn't drink anything right before bed that would require a midnight visit to the water closet-or the WC as so commonly referred to in England. (not that I'm English, just think it's funny) Anyway, Boo didn't like me as much as Nate so he only played peek-a-boo with him and I was left in peace. Phew.

I need to paint you a picture of our basement so as to truly capture the next moment. When you walk down the stairs, there is one 9ft hallway, that had been finished, as well as half of the rest of the basement. The first room on the left was used as an office and was teenie tiny but finished. The next room was on the right and used as a laundry/storage room that housed the furnace and access to the crawl space under the addition to the house. This room was not finished so the ceiling was open with all sorts of cords dangling and pipes coming down from all different parts of the house. It was the biggest room in the basement stretching the entire length of the house. We usually kept the door to this room closed, but today had it open because we were working down there had moved a bunch of stuff in there from the workout room.

The next room off the hallway was another bathroom-to the left. Yeah, no bathroom on the second floor by the bedrooms, but there was a full bathroom with the house's only shower in the basement. (What were we thinking when we bought this house?)

Finally at the end of the hall was the family/workout room that Nate and I decided to wall paper. After the flood (WHOLE 'nother story there), we figured before we replaced the carpeting we would wallpaper for practice and so as to not ruin the new carpeting going in. We used it as a workout room, but we had an old couch down there with a couple of little cozy things including an old vintage TV to make it a nice cool summer haven. My parents had given us their leftover grass cloth wallpaper so we decided to practice hanging the paper and try to make this room pretty.

Now we had to move the couch out of the room to make room for the saw horses to lay out the paper. I was not strong enough to get this couch up the stairs and it was too big to turn it into another room so we just left it in the hallway-sort of trapping us in the workout room. I mean we could still crawl over the couch to get out, but there was no room to go around. The couch was huge though and took up the entire hallway-blocking all doors and the entrance to the stairwell.

OK, so now that you have a picture of what this scene looks like, you can probably guess what happens next. Yes, that's right. While Nate and I are semi-trapped in a room covered in wallpaper paste, Boo decides that this would be a fabulous time to try a daytime game of peek-a-boo.

He fell from the rafters somewhere in the laundry room and landed on the floor with his wings SPREAD wide (about a foot? maybe 6???? ) with the most God awful screeches I had ever heard. Seriously, it was like a bat temper tantrum meltdown. The floor was just cement and I can't get the sound of his body smacking it--hard, like dropping an encyclopedia from 7 feet. IT. was. awful.

Boo was in the laundry room, not the room we were in (THANK GOD!) but the door to the laundry was only about 3 feet from the door we were standing at. I know I peed a little as I started to instantly and involuntarily scream at the top of my lungs--and I MEAN SCREAM!!!!! I was trapped in a room and the only way out was to crawl over a couch right next to Boo who was screaming right back at me.

The next part of the story happened in slow motion.

Nate grabbed the broom (I think we used it to put the wall paper up) and jumped the couch like an expert hurdler. He was so valiant in saving his newly married damsel in hysteria distress. He got into the laundry room as Boo had gotten back up and started flying around the room. Nate was swinging the broom like a bat at the bat, and then finally closed the door to the laundry so I could escape. I was dripping with tears sweat when I got up to safety. I heard two crashes and a pop. The pop was almost like stepping on a balloon-and had left Nate standing in the pitch dark room with a bat. He swung and hit the light bulb while simultaneously killing Boo. Then he called upstairs for me to call animal control and get a shoebox. Phew. Boo had moved on-saw the light-and left our world-for good. THANK GOD!!!

Nate scooped him into the shoebox and we went out to the front porch to wait for the officer. I had permanent goosebumps and a huge urge to hurl at any second, but I did manage to get brave enough to take a peek at him and said a quick "rest in peace little Boo." He wasn't any bigger than a tiny little field mouse. Poor thing.

No. Wait--he invaded my house! Oh yeah. Damn bat-haha! You will soon find out the real reason for my attitude toward Boo.

Please stay tuned-again--I know this story is soooo long. You are NEVER going to guess what happened next! Oh, and my final analysis of why I am reminded of the book will come with the final chapter.