Crawl of the Wild

“I’m a traveling library of smells,” says Jim, the Whole House Inspector. He raises his arms and scans himself as if taking inventory. He’s explaining why vicious dogs, nasty cats, and a variety of vermin seem to tolerate him, even like him. That’s a good thing, because Jim is a trespasser on the turf of dogs, cats, and vermin in the course of doing his job.

Jim has been inspecting homes since 1985. He has crawled over, under, around and through thousands of them. He’s been face-to-face with snarling, hissing, snapping creatures, in basements, attics, and yards. He’s emerged, so far, with no bites, scratches, nor stings.

He’s been scared just once.

Jim crawled in darkness, in the dirt beneath a vacant house in the foothills. He used his flashlight like a duster, wrapping up spider webs in front of his face as he wriggled on his belly. He snaked his way around to the back of the area, and on his return saw the silhouette of a dog lying in the dirt to the right of the access opening.

He called out. No response. He crawled a little closer, and said calmly, “I’m supposed to be here,” his standard offer of diplomacy to all creatures he encounters on the job. The dog didn’t flinch. Jim bounced a dirt clod near the head, and then bounced one off the flank. No movement. “That’s a fight or flight situation once I hit him, so I knew something wasn’t right,” says Jim. He fixed his flashlight beam on the body and squirmed closer. Jim’s scalp tightened when he realized he was inches from a mountain lion, not a dog.

“He was dead, but hadn’t been for long. He wasn’t stiff,” says Jim. “I had been there to inspect that house a week earlier, but the utilities were off, so I left. It turns out the Realtor put the cover on the access opening a few days before that, and must have sealed that lion in. It was a terrible tragedy. But if I had made the crawl the first time, that lion would probably have been alive, hungry, and mad……”

Jim shuddered. “That’s scary.”