Former Rookie Cop
Appearances
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
There was nothing, nothing going on. Saturday night in this village, really quiet, super cold. And this call came over for unknown animal in a house. And it was on my post. It was about five minutes away. So myself and another car were assigned the call. And we show up there. And luckily for me, it was another guy who was pretty new.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
So we walk up to the door with all our stuff on, you know, the nylon coat, the vest, the belt, the whole nine yards. And the door opens, and the guy who is behind the door, he's about 30. I was 23 at the time. He's about 30. He looks like a broker, a lawyer. He's just really well put together, a nice guy wearing glasses. He's wearing these, like, silk pajamas with a monogram. Got my attention.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And he's going, listen, really sorry to bother you. Normally I'd handle this sort of stuff on my own, but my wife really insists that I call. And so we ask him what the problem is. He says, well— We were having kind of a romantic evening down in the living room, and we heard this scratching upstairs. So I ran upstairs to see what it was. It turns out it's coming from the attic.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
There's something up there, and it's just running around, knocking a few small things over. I can't tell what it is. It could be a squirrel or raccoon. I really don't know. So the other cop that I was with said, well, you know, we really don't handle that. It's not so much a police function.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
It's, you know, but we do have numbers of these private contractors who will come in and they'll put a humane trap down and they'll remove the animal for you. And it's really not such a big deal, but it's really not our thing. So right as he was in the middle of saying that and getting us off the hook, the guy swings the door back and there's his wife who was just beautiful. She was beautiful.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
She was probably about 26 or 27, but just really beautiful, like perfect skin, long blonde hair, great teeth. Brilliant blue eyes, a really nice smile, just like beautiful and friendly. You know, if she had said, you know, eat this broken glass, I just would have said, okay, broken glass, it is, it's fine. But she seemed really nice, so I was going to be like Galahad.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
So I just threw my arm back into this guy's chest, into my partner's chest, and I said, Mark, we can handle this. It'll be okay. And she just was just, you know, thank you so much. And she was really sweet. And I was, like, struck dead. So we walk inside. And she goes, I'm going to throw a pot of coffee on. And we go upstairs. We follow the man of the house upstairs.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And we're underneath one of those trap doors that goes into the attic with a staircase that folds out.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And we do hear an animal upstairs scratching away, just kind of scuttling around the floor. And there's definitely something up there, and it's making pretty good speed up, going from one end of the roof to the other. So I reached up, and I took the trapdoor down, and we unfolded the ladder.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And I have this big, heavy flashlight, you know, like your cop flashlight, 4D cells, the metal case, the whole thing. I shine it up through the hole in there, and it's pretty black. I can see the rafters, but really nothing else around there. And I start up the ladder.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Now, the guy who owned the house is standing almost directly underneath me just to the side of the ladder, looking straight up at me. And my partner's at the base of the ladder right behind me. So just before I stuck my head through this, like, black hole, I just kind of paused. Like, I crunched my body up underneath because I'm realizing, gee, you know, I don't know where this thing is.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
The second we pulled down the trap door, all noise upstairs just ceased. So I was kind of nervous. And I was like, well, you know, I look like an idiot just crouched up here on the top of the ladder. So I took the flashlight and I just popped my head up, turned the light on again. And about six inches from the front of my face was this squirrel at eye level with me.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
It kind of reared back on its legs. And I swear, from where I was standing, it looked like Godzilla. It just scared the heck out of me. I thought, it's a squirrel. It's going to be hiding somewhere. It's going to be terrified of me. It was six inches away from me. And it really startled me. So I kind of went, ah, and jumped back.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
and the flashlight slips out of my hands, it's heavy, and it falls directly onto the nose of the guy who's looking straight up at me. And I don't think it broke it, but it did some damage, and his nose, his hands went up to his face, blood just started pouring out between his hands. This is the homeowner. This is the homeowner.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
I lose my balance and fall backwards directly onto my partner, and I just, I pancake, we're both on our backs, he's on his back, I'm on his stomach on my back. scuttling around like a beetle trying to get up in this really narrow hallway. It's a mess. The squirrel, while we're floundering around in the hallway, jumps down the stairs, boink, boink, boink, lands on me and takes off down the stairs.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
It was terrible. So we're wondering, gee, where is the squirrel? And right at that second... The woman who lived there, you hear her scream. So my partner goes, well, you know, we found the squirrel. It's wherever she is. Yeah. So we go running downstairs, and the squirrel had come into the living room where they had been having their, like, romantic evening. They had a fire going.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
They had pillows arranged around one corner of the couch next to the fire, and they had champagne flutes out and... Nice house. Really nice. I mean, it just smelled brand new. New carpeting, new rugs, new paint. They hadn't been there for that long. So the squirrel, when it bolted down the staircase, took off into the living room and ran underneath a couch for cover. So we run downstairs.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
This guy is bleeding all over the place on his carpets. His wife looks and says, you know, what have you done? What have you done to my husband? I start going, oh, it was an accident. And I just stop in mid-sentence. What's the point? We've only been there about two minutes. So the squirrel is underneath the couch and. My partner's going, you know, let's get out of here.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
This is just, you know, it's not going well. So I am not beaten yet.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
So the squirrel is under this couch, which is in the middle of the room. So I have this bright idea. Why don't we move the furniture away from one of the corners and we'll put the couch in the corner. And the squirrel will probably move along with the couch because it's the only cover available to it. And once we get into the corner, we'll only have two open sides of the couch to worry about.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Yes. Yeah, I was very proud of myself at that instant. But, you know. I asked her for a box and she says, sure, we've got boxes. We just moved in. We have nothing but boxes. She runs out to the garage and she comes back with a box. And the box is long enough and it fits across the entire short side of the couch where the armrest would be.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
So I start sweeping underneath the couch with my nightstick trying to move the squirrel toward the box, figuring we'll capture it and just get rid of it and we'll be out of here and there'll be no more, you know, mayhem. So it's actually working very well, and the squirrel's moving down along. You can hear it. It's chittering, and I'm trying not to hurt it. I feel kind of nervous about the thing.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
It might bite me. I don't want to hurt it, really. It's just an animal. So I'm moving it along, and everything's going very well. And then with about eight inches to go, I took one more swipe, and the thing just bolted out from underneath the couch. It was lined with, like, tassels. I couldn't really see into the couch.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
It bolted out from underneath the couch and ran directly into the fireplace, which is about three feet away. The fireplace was directly ahead of it, and it ran into the fire.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Is it on fire? It was on fire. Yeah, the tail, the bushy fur, the whole bit. I mean, it wasn't like flaming or anything, but there was smoking, and there was a little bit of fire coming off the tail. So it runs back under the couch, and the couch catches on fire in seconds. I mean, in seconds. It must have had dust under there or something else, but it just caught on fire immediately.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
We just grab the couch, heave it upside down, and now there's plenty of oxygen now for the fire to really get going, and it starts up, and we're patting it out, and it's sort of getting away from us, so we grab the only thing that's really available, and those are these really nice silk pillows, and we have one in each hand, the both of us, and we're just windmilling away at this fire on the couch, and we put it out, but it's smoking,
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
terribly and uh... uh... in the it was just it was a disaster adept at upside-down at the bottom of it is burnt the house is filling with smoke from the couch the squirrel when it went into the couch in its death rose just latched on to the bottom of the couch it's like this smoking piece of gristle underneath the couch latched on there with its claws and we're pounding smearing it all over the place in
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
The smoke alarms are firing away. The guy's standing with handkerchiefs and paper towels up around his nose, which is still bleeding. His pajamas are a mess. They're covered with blood, the front of them. And we finally get the fire out. And we're both completely red, sweating, because we're dressed for like zero degree weather and it's hot there by the fire. We're mortified.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
The house is full of smoke. The wife just looks around and just starts to cry. She goes, What have you done? What have you done to my house? You could see her just, like, clicking things off on her fingers. Okay, the dead squirrel ruined pillows. Need a new couch. The walls are covered with soot. The fire alarms are going off. My husband's disfigured. And then she really kind of just lost it.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And... He was just looking at us and shaking his head like he couldn't believe that these two idiots showed up and did this to his house over nothing, really. And he just goes, you know, you really haven't done anything wrong. I can't point to any one thing that you did. that I have a reason to get angry about. You really haven't done anything wrong. I mean, we did call you.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
But I'm just, I just, I can't thank you for this. They call for a score, I'll end up with like $3,000, $4,000 worth of damage and a broken nose. And this is all within about five minutes.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
There's always a new mistake to be made. I don't think I would make that particular mistake. I mean, you make plenty of mistakes. You make plenty of mistakes. That's just part of that job. You just try not to make the same one twice. But there's such variety that if you're going to make hundreds, you're going to make thousands of mistakes.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
You're going to make thousands of mistakes until you really get a handle on what you're doing. And with police work, they afford you plenty of space to make mistakes. But there's things that... Just either they aren't your responsibility.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
If you get involved in things that aren't your responsibility or that you're really not equipped to handle or that you don't have a specific plan, a plan that's thought through to a conclusion, you probably should reevaluate what you're doing.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
That's a great question. I guess I was thinking that I would go up there in the attic and find this cowering squirrel and somehow kind of lure it into some kind of a trap and then walk out with it and be like a hero. But as it turned out, you know, the squirrel, it was a pyrrhic victory for the squirrel, but the squirrel definitely won. You know, the squirrel really, you know, kicked our ass.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
No, no. I mean, it took me a long time to even tell people about it. You know, it was so new. I didn't want to know, you know, what a bonehead I was when I first came onto the job.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Dead squirrel, ruined pillows, need a new couch, the walls are covered with soot, the fire alarms are going off.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Is that your arm was eaten off by an alligator and that you have to have a- The entire plot- And you have a hook. Stems from that fact. Right. Right. And now, suddenly, you have no hook. In fact, you have five fingers on a hand. As if a miracle by the Lord.