Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Basement mystery *Updated*

Did you know that it has rained every other Tuesday in Milwaukee for the last two and a half months? How do I know that? Our recycling is picked up every other Tuesday morning. I've a huge stack of cardboard to take out, but if it is raining, I won't put it out to make a soggy mess for the trash men and the neighbors.

Today? Not raining! Just forty mile per hour winds. Sigh. The cardboard may continue to stack up in my basement.

Speaking of the basement, as I was picking up the bag of trash to take out this morning, I noticed some spots on the floor that appear to be...blood.

For the first five minutes after I moved in, the basement floor was clear. Since then, it's been more or less (mostly more, honestly) covered in empty boxes awaiting recycling. Between giving a load of boxes to a friend for her move and restacking what was left, I've managed to clear out over half the basement over the last week. I don't remember seeing the spots then, but I'm not always the most observant.

The point is that I'm not sure if these are old spots, or new. They could even be paint, though nothing in the house is red/rust colored. I checked the ceiling, and nothing is rusty and dripping. I know I didn't bleed (and fairly profusely; most spots are nickel sized & some are smeared) all over the floor.

It has me a bit weirded out. More than likely it's paint I didn't notice before. The other two alternatives - an animal somehow made its way in, bled all over my basement and crawled off...somewhere...to die, or an ax murderer who used my basement to clean up after killing a neighbor - aren't exactly appealing.

To make sure neither of those last two scenarios are true, I suppose I should cut up the last of the boxes and haul everything to the dump (unlike the West Allis city yards, the Greenfield dump is secret, not listed on the city web site nor easily found via search engine, but that's another story).

Does anyone want to help? I'll even let you wield the baseball bat if we do run into a "visitor".

*Update* The spots run under the rug (which was there when I moved in, and has not been moved), therefore they are not new. Further investigation seems to confirm they are paint, not anything more sinister.

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