adventures in house hunting

christopher & i spent the better part of saturday looking at seven more houses with our realtor, josephine. i was curious how long this was going to take us because last weekend, four houses took 3 hours! i guess we're getting faster because it didn't take double that. we saw some great houses, and i couldn't put my finger on why but a few just didn't pop for me. josephine says we have to love it, almost instinctively. i have enjoyed this process so far, and we have a couple houses we really do like a lot.

one really funny thing happened at one of the older houses: we were looking around downstairs, then i was the first one to go upstairs to look in the master bedroom. at first i gasped when i saw this hairy thing in the middle of the floor. then i thought, no- that couldn't be...must be a dog toy or something (keep in mind that the house was completely vacant). but it was, we discovered, a dead squirrel! just sprawled out, legs every which way in the middle of the floor. josephine thought it was really sad and wouldn't set foot in the room, i thought it was really disgusting and tip-toed past so i could look at the master closet, and christopher thought the whole thing was truly hilarious...and took pictures. i'll spare you and limit it to one:
we developed a scenario for what must have happened, based on the squirrel's positioning: christopher thought he got in through the roof. josephine & i thought he must have wandered around desperately, looking for water or a nut. then he dragged his body across the carpeted desert until his strength gave way and he collapsed dead. fortunately he had not been dead very long- so christopher tells me, with his ME experience (as in, medical examiner not mechanical engineer!) from watching law & order reruns.

as we were leaving that house, our realtor called the selling agent of the home to let her know there was a dead squirrel in the middle of her master bedroom. she said a what? after josephine clarified, the agent wanted to know - other than the dead squirrel - what we thought of the house! um, it's not at the top of our list.