Time to bitch about my apartment.
I live on the third and top floor of my building. A year ago, a wind storm came through and ripped off the vinyl siding that covered the underside of the roof hanging over my kitchen windows. I called maintenance and it never got fixed.
Birds then made a nest in the roof's now-exposed soft underbelly. I called maintenance to fix it and it never got fixed. Dealing with those birds and all the other birds loudly trying to steal their nest slowly became an accepted part of our everyday life here.
Then several weeks back, I came home for work on a Monday and heard scratching and squawking coming from inside our kitchen wall. There was a bird stuck in there somehow. I called maintenance, but it was after their normal hours so I had to settle for leaving a voicemail.
The next morning, I heard the same scratching and squawking while getting ready for work. I called maintenance from work and was told that it sounded like a bird was stuck in a dryer vent that runs through that part of the wall. Fixing that requires a ladder, and because it was raining that day, it was unsafe for anyone to be climbing a ladder. I was assured that as soon as the weather cleared, our wall bird would be removed. When I came home from work, the bird was still making noise.
The next morning, more scratching and squawking. I called again from work and got a new, but similar, excuse. The ladder is a two-man job -- one to hold and one to climb the thing -- and because most of their guys were at some maintenance meeting, only one was available. I was assured that as soon as two guys were available, out wall bird would be removed. When I came home from work, the bird was still making noise.
The next morning, more scratching and sqawking. I called again from work and got a whole new excuse. Apparently now clearing out this vent required access to the attic, and for some reason our maintenance people can't access the attics they're paid to maintain. I was assured that as soon as they could access the attic (whatever bullsh!t that meant), our wal bird would be removed. When I came home from work, there was silence. The bird was dead.
The next day was Friday, and I took the day off to deal with this. Finally, someone actually came to the apartment. All he did was hook up a modified leaf-blower to our dryer vent to "blow out the lines". He said it didn't sound like there was a bird in the line, so he'd be back later to try something else. He never came back. I called maintenance and was assured someone would come by. No one did. So I went to the office and found the head of maintenance. He dropped what he was doing and came straight to our building.
Within second of seeing the building, he knew what the problem was. It had nothing to do with vents or attics. It was our roof birds. One fell through a crack in the wall and died. He promised to hire a roofing contractor to get the nests out of there and seal up the roof. The next day I left for a two-week business trip.
When I came home, the roof had been fixed but nothing had been done to remove the bird carcass from our kitchen wall. That Thursday night ... two weeks from the day the bird died ... we saw beetles in the apartment for the first time since moving in about a year and a half ago. I killed 'em and thought nothing of it.
Saturday my fiancee and I went to Jersey to visit some family and friends. When we came back Sunday evening, we found flies. They had gray stripes on their backs and wide-set red eyes. A quick Google search revealed that they're called Flesh Flies, and -- surprise! -- their maggots are laid in the corpes of dead animals. In a matter of about two hours, I killed 12 of these flies. I called maintenance and left a message.
Today I took the day off again to deal with this, and haven't seen a single fly yet. I wanna get back on the horn with maintenance and shove my foot up thier asses, but if they came by they'd see nothing. And apparently, once an animal corpse has been used to feed maggots, there isn't enough left for another batch of maggots to be laid there, so it could be that this nuisance has already run its course.
Believe it or not, that's the quick version of the story.
