Today's mid-morning activity of assisting my roommate in her endeavor to dismantle a rather pernicious jasmine plant from our rooftop resulted in some strange findings.

Finding 1: someone thought it would be a good idea to affix chicken wire to our gutters to help support the weight of the climbing jasmine plant

Finding 2: result of Finding 1 over at least a decade resulted in our gutters over the bathroom being filled with dirt and mulch. You could grow plants in those gutters.

Finding 3: Finding 3 is the most interesting of them all. For the last several months I have mentioned the clan of vicious raccoons that live within the confines of our property. I routinely hear them on the porch, underneath the floorboards, and sometimes running across the roof. I had no evidence it was actually raccoons on our roof until this morning. Climbing on the rooftop, we found and ENORMOUS pile of animal feces. The pile was several feet in diameter and several inches thick. Rain and debris had mixed into the mass, causing it to be rather SOLID and FORMIDABLE. Within seconds, we surmised that the feces was a gift from the mulititudes of procyon lotors that haunt Bateman Street. The strangeness about the feces, though, was that it appeared too big to even come from a raccoon. But it would be rather impossible for a dog or reckless homeless person to get up there without us NOTICING. The only other feasible culprit is our toothless cat. However, we are ruling her out because although she is constantly seen on the roof, she hardly eats anything. The raccoons tend to eat her food before she does.

Finding 4: Our house was on the verge of being overtaken by not only a rabid jasmine plant, but a flurry of blood sucking spider spawn. They were all over the place and managed to get in the house by crawling all over Christina. She showered but they were still surfacing somehow.

Finding 5: Roofs are cool places. No wonder the cat and raccoons like it up there. In Berkeley, you could feasibly go from one rooftop to the next if you had good jumping legs and rooftops of similar heights because they are somewhat in close proximity.

Finding 6: The status of our roof is actually quite good. Not terribly much evidence of the roofing coming apart or being deteriorated.