Dead rats and telephone providers

                                                   By Dave Hamby

              Ordinarily when I speak of malodorous vermin I’m speaking of someone who I don’t agree with politically or more often   a fellow motorist. Lately I’ve reserved this description for an unfortunate creature who chose to die in one of the walls of my bedroom, (I’m not certain which wall, the odor is pervasive) and also to describe my telephone service provider.

              The stinking dead critter is some poor creature who climbed up in my attic to escape a cold night about three weeks ago, fell into a wall opening and died a horrible death.  At first I thought it was a mouse or a rat, but as time passed and the volume of stink it emitted increased, I changed my opinion to thinking it is a larger animal like   a possum or a raccoon.  Lately I’m wondering if it’s something like an elephant that’s escaped from the Circus of maybe a land-bound blue whale.  

              When we caught our first rancid whiff of something being wrong I thought the smell would go away on its own soon enough.   After all, how long can it take for a little critter that’s small enough to get into our attic to rot away and become nothing.  So far it’s been three weeks and we're still counting.

            My wife and I spent the first couple of nights on the couches in our living room.   We considered moving into our motor home but discovered that by opening all of the windows in that part of the house the smell was tolerable. Sleeping in a heated waterbed with a pile of blankets allows us to survive these chilly nights.

          The stink coming from my telephone service provider started after I ordered DSL for my business, which was about the same time the critter died. When the due date passed for this service to start and I had no service, I gave them a call.  I was told that even though I ordered the DSL, the DSL had never been ordered.  They went on to say that they would gladly order it right away and I could expect to have it in a week or so.   I didn’t think this was good enough, so I asked to speak to a supervisor and was put on hold.   Later, much later, I was told the supervisor would call me at some later, undetermined time.  She never called.  

          After three days I called again, and again asked to speak to a supervisor.  This time I actually got to speak to one and she told me that there was nothing she could do and I would just have to be patient and wait for a week and I’d have my DSL. “Why,” I asked her, “Do you folks spend all of that money on advertising to have one of my favorite movie stars convince me that you guys are really good folks, and then you go and treat me like this?” “We are good folks,” she replied, “You’re just having a little bad luck.” I asked her if something else could be done.  She said she would check into it and call me back.  She never called.

           I waited patiently and when the second due date passed and I still didn’t have DSL, I again attempted to resolve this issue via the telephone.  (As an aside, why is it so hard to get someone from a phone company on the telephone?)  I’ll confess to being a little peevish this time.  When it was explained to me that my husband canceled the order and then reordered the service resulting in an installation date of a week into the future, I became irate.  

           I am married, but I don’t have a husband, I have a wife and she doesn’t work in my office.  This time the supervisor I talked to actually gave me the impression that he really wanted to see me with DSL service.  He actually called me back when he said he would.  He was pleasant and competent in every respect except for one, he was unable to provide me with DSL service.

           When I complained to my office mate about the crummy service I was getting he told me all telephone service providers are like that. “They all really stink,” he said.   “Stink like a dead possum rotting in a bedroom wall?” I asked.   “Yeah!” he said. “Gee Hamby, you really have a way with words.”

             Last night as I got in bed I asked the wall that had the worst smell if it thought I might have my DSL before the holidays.  “Who are you talking too?” my wife asked sleepily from the other side of the bed. “The dead critter,” I replied.  “I think it works for the phone company.”