Close encounters of the creature kind:
I was performing an inspection several years ago in an older home. The owner of the home was an elderly lady that insisted upon being present for the inspection. As I parted the old heavy living room drapes to inspect a picture window out flew a bat. Of course, the next words out of the home owners mouth were, “Oh, my goodness! That bat wasn’t here before you arrived!” So, the home inspection was put on the back burner while the home buyer, the real estate agent and I chased the bat throughout the house for probably fifteen minutes. Our best attempts to capture the bat were futile. Finally, as it flew through the living room, the lady’s cat jumped up and batted it out of the air and into the couch. I pounced upon it with a bed sheet and carried it outside and released it. It’s always something… - Mike Bryan, MGB Inspection Service, Inc. Saved for a Rainy Day:
While inspecting a tenant house on a farm once, I removed the cover of a gas forced air furnace only to discover one of the ports of the heat exchanger neatly packed with grain. A mouse was preparing for winter by using it as a silo. - Mike Bryan, MGB Inspection Service, Inc.
(If you have similar stories, we’d be pleased to receive them and post them along with a link to your site on our serendipity page at inspectorsreference.com!)
I was inspecting a chimney. I couldn’t get the damper to open freely so I used my big screwdriver to pry it open. Low & behold…the damper quickly opened up and guess what falls to the floor of the firebox.
A skeleton of a small animal. Once the bones hit the floor, my female client screamed and ran towards the kitchen. It took a little while for the Realtor to calm her down.
On an inspection my fellow inspector and myself could not open the damper. While we tried, we were showered with the usual debris. We mentioned to the buyer he needs to have it cleaned and evaluated. The buyer asked the seller if he ever had it cleaned? The seller stated that he did, just a year prior.
The seller goes over to the damper, jams it hard, and then straight out of a Laural and Hardy movie… baawoof… a cloud of soot and debris flows out of the chimney like a pyroclastic flow off of a volcano. When it settles, there the seller sits covered in black dust. Of course, we immediately had to go do some inspecting (laughing), outside in the back yard.
“If it jams…don’t force it, report it”
tgardner
(Timothy Gardner, VA HI Lic# 3380000992 NRS)
6
I was in an attic of a very large home. ( Now, this is going to sound like one-upmanship, but what the Hey?) last month that was packed to the rafters with those translucent storage boxes.
As my flashlight beam cut across on of these boxes, a human skull was peering back at me. After clearing my shorts, and looking closer, there were several (I didn’t have the nerve to count them, but there were more than ten) containers of these skulls and bones.
My first thought was “who do I report this to?” A quick phone call to the realtor revealed that the skeleton’s were part of a private Incan archeaological collection of the seller. and were registered and legal. The remains were put in the attic so they wouldn’t scare off a potential buyer.
My fee included the price of the discarded shorts.