You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
The Trailer.
The stench emanating from the Winnebago is overwhelming. It smells like an open sewer filtered through a skunk’s raised tail.
The filthy camper is in the middle of the KOA campground at the back end of the park. The trees surrounding the trailer are tall and the foliage thick. Very little light is penetrating the ground bathing the crime scene in a dull gray light.
As I approach the white and brown tin box with dark windows, I see a series of bright orange electrical cords running from the rear window. Is this how they access electricity, I think to myself. I see a window air conditioner. It is silent, hanging by a rusty hinge.
I notice the dented siding. It is covered with dirt and mold, like the bottom of a sailboat moored to a dock through 3 hurricane seasons.
I approach the front stoop. It is a shaky wooden staircase with a porcelain replica of a dog on the side. Ironic, I think, since I am here because of animal cruelty violations.
I pause, looking at the flimsy door, that is made of some soft wood that is warping and falling off the hinges. I stand at the portal deciding whether to knock or shout or simply walk away. There is a hole in the door. Perhaps it’s a doggie door. Perhaps just one more renovation that the arrested owners never got to.
I peer inside the dark and gloomy domicile. It is spooky like a summer time Halloween exhibit. I can’t make out detail inside, but I can tell it’s a disgusting dirt hole. It reminds me of a greasy, slimy insinkerator loaded with bacon grease and raw fish scales.
Now that I am next to the door, the smell pushing through the tiny doggie door is powerful. It is a fire hose of stink. It is an invisible funk that is exiting the structure like a noxious freight train.
“I’m gonna vomit,” I tell my cameraman who is still 20 yards away, video taping me on the stoop, waiting for me to knock.
I look above the doorway. There is a tapestry of spider webs criss crossing thin air. What the web is attached to is unknown. I see flies and bits of detritus caught in the web. One fly is still alive, slowly moving, trying to unstick its delicate wings, but it cannot escape. It is slowly dying. Somewhere, the spider sharpens its fangs, it’s dinner reservation secured.
I notice a buzzing around the roof. It is a squadron of mosquitoes. They are barely audible, like a chain saw engine revving from 5 blocks away. But they are noticeable, and they are an irritant.
“I’m getting eaten alive out here,” my photog says, brushing away invisible pests that only he can see.
This place is pestilence. It is blood sucking disgust. I hate being here. I hate that animals have had to suffer in this horrible place.
I knock on the door. I know nobody is home. I do it anyway, just in case. I do it for televised effect, and so I can tell a judge in a courtroom in the future, that I was not trespassing.
“Nobody is home,” I say to my photographer.
“You wanna do a stand up on the porch?” he says, swatting the air, pushing away mosquitoes and invisible manifestations of flying disgust.
I turn to the camera and pause. I have to decide what to say at this juncture that will make sense in a story that won’t be put together for another 4 hours. I think for a moment, staring inside the dark trailer. I see dog excrement and beer cans and empty cigarette boxes. I see debris and urine and general disarray.
I turn to the camera. “Ok, you gonna pull off the trailer?”
My photographer zooms into the dark trailer window with the tattered screen. “Go,” he says, indicating he will take my cue.
I take a gulp of air, and stare at the trees above me. For some reason, if I don’t pay attention to the camera, if I concentrate on something else, like the trees or a passing car or a wood nymph, my mind relaxes and the words just come to me.
“OK. 3. 2. 1.” I pause. Like a bathtub filling with warm water, the words I didn’t know I’d say a moment ago fill the flood gates of my mind. I feel them slip down the back of my skull, into my throat and dance on the tip of my tongue. The consonants, the alliteration, the letters and the thoughts are pushing against my teeth, ready to explode into the stench filled air that surrounds me like a bad dream.
“Investigators tell me that the couple that owns this trailer has been gone for 4 days. Inside this filthy Winnebago, detectives find 3 dogs and 2 cats. I’m told it was hot and the animals had no food or water and they were walking around in their own excrement.”
I pause again.
“You like it?,” my photog says.
You like it? I think about his question in the context of the story we are doing. I will come to learn that the couple is in a nearby motel with 2 other dogs. They will ultimately be charged with felony cruelty to animals. The husband will make bond and email me in some sing song language that his wife walked to the trailer every day and reportedly fed and watered the animals. “Don’t write a story without getting the other side,” he angrily says.
I think about his email. I received it a day after the story aired. The day I am at the trailer, the day I knock on his disgusting trailer door, he is in jail. It’s tough to get a comment from jail.
His email to me is simple. He alleges that his wife walked to the trailer every day and fed the dogs. Really? What about the filth? What about the umpteen lumps of dog crap on the floorboards of the 10′ by 10′ shit hole? What about the frightened animals pacing on the dash board of the trailer? What about the dog standing on the couch, so he didn’t have to stand in an inch of defecation? What about the hot, stagnating stench that permeates this home?
Animal control seized the dogs and cats. I will visit them at the pound. They are in cages in a large garage that is filled with industrial fans to move the sweltering heat away from the animals. The floor is clean, and the animals fed and watered. It is not a great life for the dogs and cats here, but it’s better than standing paw deep in dog crap in a Winnebago hot box.
“You like your stand up?,” my photog asks again, taking the camera off his shoulder.
“Yeah. We’re good,” I say walking away from the tiny porthole of stench. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I feel like I need to decontaminate.”
My photog scratches his arm from an invisible assault of lecherous commandos. I don’t have to tell him twice.
We drive away from the KOA campground.
I feel like itching my skin with Lysol and soap.
“How do people live like this?,” I mutter as we turn onto the main drag.
Never was I so happy to see an Arby’s and an Exxon station, I think to myself as the air conditioning of the little Ford SUV cools us down and the visceral disgust of the mosquitoes and stench becomes a memory in our rear view mirror.
Life’s Crazy™