Ventures

Just got the call- I am excused and don’t need to report for jury selection on Monday. I’m curious about the case now, so will be paying attention to what happens with it. Selection was for State of New Jersey vs. George Jenewicz, what I now know (because I can look it up) is a new trial after the State Supreme Court overturned a conviction from 2002. The alleged murder happened in 1998. I wasn’t the only person in the room wondering about the 10 years that have passed… some voiced their question out loud. I did hear 2 women behind me talking, one telling the other that there is no death penalty in NJ, so she didn’t need to worry about that. I guess that’s a new thing because in the information I’ve seen since, capital punishment was an option at the time of the original trial. So apparently this man was originally convicted, but the conviction was (in January this year) overturned due to trial errors.

From the charges as the judge read them and the inferrences from the questionnaire, this sounded like a case that could have been on CSI or Bones (what with the dismemberment part and all).

For anyone interested, here’s some articles on the case. Would be interesting to be part of the process, but glad I don’t have to listen to stories or look at pictures of this crime scene.

Article on January Supreme Court Overturn
An article linked from the first
Another article linked from the first
Some NJ Court opinions (search page) on or referring to the Jenewicz trials

I got my first summons for jury duty about a month ago and had to report today. Coincidentally, just before receiving the summons I was part of a conversation about the jury rooms in several nearby counties. After seeing the one I get to sit in… I’m a bit jealous of those in other counties. I heard that Somerset’s recently renovated jury room is in an old church. There’s a TV in one corner, plenty of reading material, coffee/refreshments, and comfy chairs. My memory of this may be a bit skewed as I think of what would be really nice for a jury room.. that was not present in ours.

I was in a white walled room with several square pillars and one big round one. The chairs were at least comfortable, but similar to those in airports. Four vending machines were available (do they let you go out for lunch?? I don’t know, no one explained that). And I didn’t have time to eat breakfast. Swell.

Once we sat around for an hour and a half, the judge came in to talk to us. Finally it started getting interesting. I figured if nothing else there would be a ‘Welcome, this is how the day is going to work’ message within the first 20-30 minutes, but no.

Today we all were there for jury selection for a specific trial (rather than the 1 day or 1 trial verbage). We listened to the charges, then filled out a (long) questionnaire. The involved parties, attorneys and who-not, will use those questionnaires to excuse some people. Those who are excused will get a phone call telling them so. Everyone else has to go back on Monday when they will call us in to question us in person about our views, backgrounds, experiences.

From the information we were given, I can’t see any reason I’d be excused based on my questionnaire. We’ll see if I get a call. If not, then Monday they narrow down to 16 (12 + 4 alternates) to serve for the estimated 2.5 week trial.

Of course I can’t discuss the case itself, but the charges sounded like the synopsis for an evening drama.

“Oh please, not again!” I whispered, thus beginning this weekend’s adventures. The ‘not again’ refers to this.

I was so intent on getting past that episode that I never finished that story.

The scratching we heard 15 minutes later did result in said bird returning to the laundry room either that night or sometime the next day. In the morning we checked the bread pan and found it empty and didn’t hear anything, so we went on to work. Upon returning home it seemed the thing hurt itself getting out of our bread pan trap (or in the following freaking-out it did). We tried opening the patio door, closing all other doors in the house and just letting it come out on its own, but it never did– then it got to dusk so it wouldn’t have the light to lead it out anymore. We tried capture methods as finally worked the night before, but it apparently remembered this and was scared out of its mind. We left it alone in the room with the light off in an attempt to calm it down, but it continued to flap around, running into ceiling, walls, door, anything it could. The poor thing was really going to hurt itself, so we decided we had to get it out ourselves. We employed similar broom and bird net techniques from the previous night’s exercises and managed to catch it and get it out, noting as we did so that it was bleeding. It flew across the street and landed in the grass and just sat there.

Upon returning to our laundry room (at this point it’s pretty sparse as we’d removed everything we could so it wouldn’t have to be cleaned again), we noticed the spots on the door. Then looking further, on the walls, the ceiling, the washer and dryer… everywhere. Not just bird poop (that was there, too, but was to be expected), but blood. It had bludgeoned itself trying to find a way out. This is unbelievably sad to me, but I really don’t know what else we could have done.

At some point either that day or the next, the chimney was fixed, so we had no more birds. It took a long time to clean all the walls and the door- even now a year later you can see where we had to scrub the paint to get the blood off.

So a recap:

2006
June 21 I hear something
June 26 Bird #1- dead
July 2 Bird #2-alive
July 3 call to Association re:birds
July 10 call to Landlord (prob should have done this sooner) and Bird #3- alive
July 11 Bird #4-alive, but bludgeoned

Which brings us to this morning and my opening quote. As I opened the laundry room door to get a new trash bag for the kitchen, I heard a little scratching sound and saw a laundry drying rack that’s folded up next to the furnace shift just a tad. Close door.

Mornings are good– close all doors in hallway, open patio door and screen (where it’s nice and sunny out today, thank God!), create nice directional on where to go.
Open door to laundry room about halfway, go sit on couch to see what happens.

Bird (same type as before) comes out from dark, narrow space next to furnace and onto pipe along front edge of furnace, presumably so I can get a look at him. He hops up and flies out of laundry room, through living room and directly out of patio door and back into the wild world of New Jersey.

2008
June 28 Brid #5- alive; call to Association, call to Landlord

I hope the list doesn’t get any longer

After many months it has now passed: the Probe is gone. As J pointed out, a lot of the things I was willing to put up with, someone purchasing a car wouldn’t be– the falling ceiling fabric, the broken seatbelt (just manual now instead of automatic), the hatch that wouldn’t stay up, the crackly speakers, etc., etc. (unfortunately I could go on for a while here). The final catch was the exhaust: after having the exhaust from the muffler back replaced, they said I had a crack in the exhaust manifold. I’m not so sure that it was there before I took the car in, as they hadn’t mentioned it before, but either way, they said I could be getting CO into the cab of the car. I didn’t get a second opinion. I didn’t get a CO test (although maybe putting a detector in there would have done the trick). It just put us over the nickel-and-diming edge and got me to get rid of it.

I donated to Habitat for Humanity (not that they’ll get much for it, I’m afraid), and the nice guy who picked it up in the pouring rain Friday afternoon said that it was really nice for a donation. (?) Yeah– apparently most of the cars he picks up as donations may look ok on the outside, but their motors are completely shot and they don’t even run. So mine may not be so pretty, but at least it runs! If they have a mechanic donating time to fix it up, I doubt the materials would cost too much to fix it. So maybe it will be OK. I told the guy that it was my first car; I’d gotten it in college. He said it will go to a good home.

I hope so.

Even if it is sold for scrap with the money going to Habitat: that’s still a great home.

Unbelievable. Really. Seriously. This is getting a bit old.
So much has gone on in the last month that needs to be mentioned… Girls’ Weekend in Tennessee, wedding dress shopping and making in Chicago, the guy in the airport wearing house slippers, 4th of July, my concern that I haven’t seen the rooster in a few weeks (after.. was it 4? sightings in a couple of weeks!). But all this must wait as I sit here in the dark, listening for the little rustle I so long to hear…

When we got home from the Chicago trip, I set forth immediately to battle the large bags of dirty laundry we brought home with us (souvenirs, you know). I picked up a basket of the last of the laundry that I’d left in the dryer the week before and as I walked out of the laundry room, I saw in my periphery vision a sock that I’d dropped. Thank goodness I hadn’t stepped on it because when I turned to pick it up I realized it was not a sock, but a dead bird. (insert pause for that nasty-asty shudder that I know you’re all sharing with me… all you blog readers, you). It was dark grey/blackish.. I’m not even sure what kind. After I scared J half to death with the non-words that came out of my mouth (just the ‘blechy’ kind)
and collected myself, we discussed our options, finally ending with dishwashing rubber gloves, lots of paper towels, a trash bag, and Resolve for the carpet. OK. Done. Ick. I did make the connection that in the few days I was in the house between Tennessee and Chicago– the day before I left for Chicago, I believe– I did hear some scratching around in (I thought) the furnace, but when I banged around on it I didn’t hear anything. So I just figured it was the neighbors (we hear them all the time– no big deal) and went to bed, then left for Chicago at about 5 am. [1]

But wait! That’s not all! If you keep reading now, I’ll give you TWO bird stories for the low-low RSS reader space of just ONE article! How about that!

The dead bird incident was on June 26. The following weekend I was in and out of the utility room all day doing laundry and whatnot. Sunday morning I got up at about 9am and gathered up all the towels and bathrobes around the house and took them in to wash a load and dumped my sides [2] and started screaming when something started flapping around my head… well, at least in the headspace. These are about 8′ ceilings and I’m 5′7″ so you do the math. You can imagine it– you’ve seen this comic before: where character1 surprises character2 so character2 screams. Then character1 screams in return from being shocked/scared by character2’s screams. This continues for several frames until all the screaming is gotten out of each others systems. It was quite similar with me and the bird. I got out of there and shut the door and J came staggering out of the bedroom (dumpping his sides, too, methinks) towards me as I tried to tell him “I’mOK…I’mOK…I’mOK… I’mOK… bird… alive… alivethistime… bird…. ohmyGod… ohmyGod… sunuvabitch… sunuva… [breathe...breathe...]” Big hugs… OK. I’m OK. (I continued convincing myself of this for a few minutes while the hilarity continued.
Our innovative minds finally came up with trash bags as our best options for capturing the creature that was now hanging out on one of the pipes in the utility room. Just before going in there to try to capture it, but after the ‘OK, are you ready?’ ‘Yeah, you?’ ‘OK?’ ‘OK. OK?’…we decided to check for animal control information and give them a call, but got what we expected on a Sunday morning. A recording telling us to call 911 if it was an emergency. So we found the non-emergency police number where the nice dispatch lady suggested maybe opening a window, but as the room is on an inside wall of the building, the only way out was through the pipes or through the door.
After another round of the aforementioned ‘OK?OK…’ J reached in and turned off the light in the utility room.
“That actually calmed it down a lot,” said he.
“Will it go towards the light? Are they like bugs like that? I think I’ll open the patio door all the way now,” said I.
“OK?” (you know the rest)
As he stooped and stepped in there, the bird started flying around, came out of there and directly outside. Thank goodness for 9am daylight!

The utility room got an extensive cleaning after that, anything that the bird touched or might have flapped on got washed and/or disinfected. All the clothes that were in there (we have a tendency to leave the ironing for weeks at a time), the basket of clean sheets and mattress pad that hadn’t been folded, the skirts that were laying across the sheets, everything on the shelves, the pipes themselves. Ick. I think we got it all done in a matter of hours, though, so that felt good. Well, the laundry kept going all day, but that’s always the case.
The next morning (Jul 3, now) we called the condo association office and left a message (including phone number) with a brief account of the story and our suspicion that the screen or guard or whatever that usually keeps critters out of the chimneys may have a hole in it and request that it be fixed. If there were any problems (why do we assume logic?– such as if there’s a problem with the request at all) or if they had any questions, to call us. We never heard back. (Again with the logic… we figured that meant it was being taken care of).
For the next 5 days or so every time I needed to go into that room, I would always shake the door, flip on the light but just peek in there… I should have extended that for another couple of days.

Tonight, as you can imagine, hilarity ensues when I was at home by myself and decided to grab that last load of laundry that I’d left in the dryer. I pulled the lot out into a basket, folded a pair of my trousers, and placed them on a hanger, and was just grabbing the other pair to be hung up when that familiar flapping came again. This time I was able to hold the screams to a few mild yells as I gotheheckout and even hit the light on my way out. 6:35pm. Raymond’s on. 2 hours til dusk. I shut off the TV, and made several calls (first to J and to Agnes to rant and try to regain/gather my sanity and composure. I left messages for both). I opened the patio doors all the way, then made attempt #1 to try to see where it was and what not. I went in with a laundry basket for protection (from feathers?!? I don’t know… yeah, sure, from feathers… I’m aware of how silly this all is). Flapping started, I bolted. Made several more calls, to the landlord, Mom & Dad, Agnes again. OK.. I’m a lifetime Girl Scout… I can do this. I like nature… just not IN my house. The next few tries included my old winter waterproof shell (not the first time it would have been ’shat’ on), the mesh from a sweater drying rack over my head/face, and winter gloves. I got hot. And I think someone outside saw me with my somewhat-apiarist-looking costume. Several of these attempts came about, to no avail. I finally re-found the bird, now crouched in the far back corner behind the furnace. All extra protective layers were dropped as I finally figured that if it wasn’t before, it now is definitely more scared than I am. If not hurt. After several attempts with brooms and my new handy-dandy-homemade butterfly bird net (made from aforementioned sweater drying mesh, a wire hanger, and a Swiffer handle) didn’t work, I just had to wait it out until J came home. By this time it was about 9pm anyway. He called and I suggested he just keep practicing until the band was ready to stop as the little light that was left would be gone by the time he got home anyway. So I sit. And blog.

[And now it is late. I'll finish quickly and edit later. Gotta get to bed.]
The capture tonight went as follows: J with the broom handle coming from the top, me almost getting it into the net, which it then jumped over, then continued into the corner under the shelves (another hard-to-get-at place). It managed to fly at us several times. It got up on top of the shelf. On top of the pipe. The net almost came in handy, but failed us at the last moment when it got flimsy and the bird got out the bottom. (At this point we’ve closed the door so it has to stay in this room. It’s dark outside and even with no lights on inside, we’d just lose it in the dark and not know where it was if it got to the rest of the house). It finally went up into the corner where the sleeping bags are (great.. another thing to wash) where J was able to carefully capture it in his work-gloved hand.
Sadly, this is not the end.
As we began the clean-up process AGAIN, I heard the scratching. It had been about 15 minutes, probably. We now have taped a bread-pan under the pipe on the furnace and another sweater-mesh all the way around the open area on the water-heater pipe. Both should still be able to get air up and through them, but hopefully will contain anything that makes it back down through the pipe. We don’t think this is the same bird as the one last week, but we figure it’s pretty likely that if it was a bird in the pipe again, it is probably the same one from tonight. Maybe they’re a type that mate for life or at least the whole season. Maybe the nest is in the pipe. Either way, This is getting old.

[1] Just as I am writing this, I realize that it may not have been IN the furnace/pipe, but actually might have been in the room. While it would have been nice to have it survive, I don’t think that its flying around my head at past midnight could have resulted in anything good.

[2] I am referring in particular to comment #4 on this post as I had the same reaction the first time I read the post. In fact, I recall laughing out loud. At work. “I find the first trashcan and dump my sides in it.” Totally thought he meant heave, retch, throw up, get sick, gag, vomit, barf, upchuck, ralph, hurl, purge, barf, spew, regurgitate. Hawesome.
Incidentally, if I haven’t mentioned it recently, I highly recommend Wil’s blog to anyone.. well, anyone who knows and is friends with me, because he’s a kind of person I find to be very fun and cool. That is, I would find.. if I actually knew him. And I think I might have commented on his site once or twice. Maybe not. I’ve been reading his blog for… about 2.5-3 years now. I’ve heard that now it’s one of the most popular blogs on the Internets. I knew I should have commented back in the day… now everybody reads it. *sigh*. Just another one of the millions.