Last Wednesday night around 10pm, I was screwing around on the internet and getting ready for bed when Lil’ Smell asked me if I’d heard the heat come on recently. I hadn’t. We cranked the thermostat: nothing. I flipped on the emergency heat switch: nothing. Oh, double hella crap, it had to be the breakers. And they’re in the attic.

Now as far as I’m concerned I’ve faced my fear of the attic and the C.H.A.D.. So I made my case to Smell that it was her turn. And well…I could tell the rest of the story, but I just found that she told her own version on her MySpace “blog”:

C.H.A.D.

That’s right…I’m talking about a Cannibalistic Humanoid Attic Dweller. We have one, although it sounds like a gang having a rumble at 7am every morning above my head. So…this evening…the roommate (Felix) and I notice that it’s a tad chilly in the house. That the heat hasn’t come on in the past two hours. We shove the thing to 80 degrees and still nothing. Immediately we both freeze with fear because we know what comes next – one of us must brave the attic and it’s unwelcome inhabitants to see if the fuse had blown. Shitballs.

Now, Felix refuses to go up there as he was determined to be in bed with a book by 10pm, and well…it’s ten minutes past his bed time and that would mean putting on different clothes and then taking 3 crying game showers to get the attic smell off and wash out any bites from the presumably rabies infested C.H.A.D. Blahblahblah…horseshit.

So there I was at 10:30pm, wearing pink rainboots with my pants tucked in the top, a hoodie with the drawstring drawn tight enough so only my eyes and schnozz show, a pair of industrial work gloves, and the ensemble was topped off with science goggles from Felix’s closet. I didn’t ask.

With a promise of a Xanax to calm my already frayed nerves, I crawled up into the deep dark depths of the attic with only my GI Joe flashlight and rubber boots to protect me from the wrestlemania obsessed things that live in the attic. I had to crawl to the other end of the fucking roof to get to the panel, and guess what? No bloody fuses had blown.

So, I’m on my hands and knees. Covered in insulation and dust. Wearing leather gloves, rubber boots, and some science goggles. Normally this means I had a good Saturday night, alas on this occasion it means I got to crawl into the dank dark terrifying attic with a rabid inhabitant for nothing.

It was, if I may say so, hilarious. Chivalrous? No. But really funny. Poor Smell almost had a panic attack.

The best part of the story is that the heat actually did stop working because of the C.H.A.D.. We got a repairman out the next day and after this huge dude spent nearly an hour in our cramped attic, we had heat again. When he emerged, he reported that squirrels had chewed through a conduit.

The squirrels will get theirs. Oh yes they will.

I will leave it to you, dear readers, to determine what’s more fearsome: some tiny squirrels or Lil’ Smell in her anti-C.H.A.D. hazmat gear.

My apologies for the poor photos. Smell wasn’t in a vogue-ing mood and I had the flash turned off accidentally.