If you look to the right, you’ll see a piece of the creature that was, until yesterday, draped over the power lines in our backyard. This photo doesn’t really do it justice. It was significantly more impressive when it was all in one piece, its paws dangling down over our heads, its thick brown fur blowing stiffly in the wind.

For those of you who haven’t been following along in the comments section for the past few days, the mother of one of Clementine’s friends pointed it out to Linette a few days ago when they were sitting in the back yard, drinking coffee and watching our kids try to steal toys from one another. She apparently looked up, pointed and said very mater-of-factly, “There’s something dead up there, above us.” Linette tried for a while to convince everyone that it was just some kind of nest, but once they discerned the paws, it was all over – the play date had been ruined.

So, I got home from work and called the power company. “It looks like a small electrocuted bear is sitting on the phone pole in our back yard,” I said. They responded by sending over an old, cigarette-stained man a few hours later. When he and I went back to look at it, he said he’d never seen anything quite like it… and then added (with a bit of a chuckle) that, as this was more of a two-person job, he’d have to leave it for the day crew to deal with. (As he was talking about bringing a truck into the yard, it was my assumption that this crew that he talked about would be using a crane or something to get at and retrieve the thing. He made it sound like a huge, complicated ordeal that required the utmost care and precision.)

The next day, two guys showed up. And, as they made it very clear, they had no intention of either using a crane or retrieving the thing. They were just there to get the thing down before it burst into flames… Linette, who was standing in the doorway with the baby, asked them if they could try to get it down in one piece, as she didn’t want Clementine or the dog getting into any chunks that they missed. At that point, they informed her that they’d just be poking at it with something until it fell apart and that it “wasn’t (their) problem” once it was off the pole. (Granted, that was nicer than just saying, “Fuck you, lady,” but it still pissed me off.)

They eventually nudged most of it off the power lines, as Linette stood in the kitchen window watching. (There still seems to be some hair and meat wrapped around a transformer, but most of it’s down now.)

According to Linette, once they got it down, the one Detroit Edison guy who’d been holding the long, metal, critter-poking pole, began chasing the other guy around our yard with it. (Apparently there was a large piece of gore still clinging to the end of the pole.) After a few minutes of fun, they wiped the meat and fur off of the pole, and into our grass, and then rang the buzzer to tell Linette that they’d be on their way. The good news, they said, was that most of it had fallen into the yard of the crack house next door, so we wouldn’t have to worry about it.

So, when I got home, it became my job to hunt down and pick up the bits of fur and flesh scattered around our yard and then to go over and tell the guys next door that they might want to do something about the large, rotting creature that landed somewhere behind their shed/meth lab. I walked over and rang the bell, but no one came. The door was wide open, so I assume that they were in, but since no one came, I just invited myself into their back yard to see if I could get a glimpse of the thing up close… Fortunately, I had my camera.

As the fur is clearly brown, my guess is that it’s either a very large, bloated housecat, or a small bear. Either that, or someone planted a non-climbing animal, like a beaver or a dog, up there in order to freak me out… If you’ve got a better theory, let me know.