Man Job

I live with my lovely fiancé and her mother. This makes me the lone male in the house, which isn’t counting the dog or cat, neither of whom have balls. This means that when a jar needs to be opened, trahs needs to be taken out late at night, or something Dirty needs to be done it’s my job (you’ll notice the capital “D” implying it’s level of filth).

A week or so ago, when the rain was comign down pretty hard, Milca heard a noise from above the stove. She said it sounded like a scampering. Milca’s mom passed it off as merely the rain, but Milca was sure that it was some sort of critter, perhaps a bug or rodent. The scampering was short-lived, so it wasn’t dwelled on.

Yesterday I woke up, went upstairs and was greeted in the kitchen by Milca who asked, “Do you smell that?”

My nose up in the air I answer, “Kinda.”

“Come over here and smell,” she said, leading me to the stove, pointing to the vent.

“It smells like shit.”

“You have a man job to do.”

So she lays down paper over the stove to protect it from whatever nastiness might fall on it. The protective covering was removed, and was covered in gobs of grease, which slowly started to drip onto the paper. It was just slow enough that you couldn’t help but say “EEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWW!!”

With the cover off I could see the vent, and could also remove it. Noting that most of the inner workings were covered in this nasty layer of grease, and remembering that something once scampered in there I requested latex gloves, which were on hand. I was able to unplug the vent, but before I loosened the bolts Milca noticed feathers sticking out of one side. Here we go.

I had Milca put on gloves to hold the vent while I loosened the bolts and took off the vent entirely, at which point I told her to get out of the kitchen. Whatever was going to happen, I wanted it to happen to only me. For the rest of the post anything in brackets is what I saw. Everything else is what they heard.

[I got the vent down onto the paper, and saw the little body of a bird.]

“Don’t come in here.”

[I had the gloves on, so grabbing it wasn’t going to gross me out.]

“Awww… Ahh… Ughh…”

[I put the bird on the paper, then peered in to the vent to make sure that I got all of it out. There were a few puffs of feathers still in there.]

“Aww, man…”

[That’s when I looked back at the bird, almost as though my peripheral vision was telling me that something was amiss. Magots.]

“Aww, Jesus. Don’t come in here. Ugh… Egh…”

[Realizing that there were magots in the bird that were wriggling and attempting to get out of said bird, I grabbed the bird and put it in a paper bag that I would not be looking in if I could avoid it.]

Milca was outside doing some art work at this point so she wouldn’t have to hear my running commentary, which I was trying to keep to a minimum, except for the outbursts because of new surprises

[I looked into the vent realizing that I not only had to worry about leftover bird pieces, but rogue magots that were still in there. Sure enough, there they were. Not filling it, of course, but about 6-12 of them in the vent itself, which I could not reach with my gloved hands. I needed to get in there with something that I could throw away. Milca’s mom doesn’t want the dogs to eat off of our plates even if the plate is going to be cleaned, so I was pretty sure that she wouldn’t want anything that was going to stay in the kitchen to go in that vent.]

“Are there any disposable chop sticks?”

“Yes, hold on,” Milca’s mom replies. She shielded her eyes from what was happening, got to the drawer, pulled out the chopsticks and got them seperated for me.

“Thank you, now get out of here.” I told her, using a tone that was not so much a command as much as an extremely strong suggestion. At any rate, she busted out of that kitchen rather quickly.

[I was reminded rather strongly of that scene in The Lost Boys when the rice turns into magots. “Magots, Michael.” Fuck you, Kiefer. I could hear your creepy voice as I picked the magots one by one out of the vent, and it gave me chills. I got them all onto the paper, picked the last bits of feathers that I could reach, then put all the feathers, magots, chop sticks, and everything else that wasn’t grease in the paper bag with the bird.]

I ran to the trash outside, then back to the kitchen to get the vent and clean it. I took it outside where Milca was, layed the vent out on more paper, then went to the garage for some good old WD-40. When I came back, the vent had already started dripping grease on the paper, as it was on it’s side, allowing the grease to escape. While I was searching for the WD-40 I had started telling the story of what I just had to deal with, which is when she noticed that a couple magots had stowed away in the grease.

I sprayed the hell out of the insides of the vent, wiping what I could with steel wool, and gave the outside a good cleaning. Meanwhile, Milca’s mom was in the kitchen cleaning the inside of the covering. She was having a hard time, as it was govered in at least 4mm of the grime. Once I had the vent cleaned as good as I could get it, I put it back in, closed it up, washed my hands, and showered, as I felt really, really dirty.

Man Jobs suck ass.