Living in South Florida means that the A/C must be on all year round. When we sit inside our house enjoying our favorite TV shows under circulated cool air, the outside temperature can be over 90 degrees. There is a lot of moisture in the air and the A/C unit produces a lot of condensation water. In the summer, there can be more than 5 gallons of water generated in just a few hours. We know this because we have a bucket under the drain outlet to collect the water. This is to prevent algae and weeds from growing in the damp corner. We also can use the collected water on some flowers and plants.
Every morning before I go to work and evening after I’m back from work I dump the water. It’s one of those things that as a homeowner one must do every day to keep the property in good order. Comparing to the many other things I do on weekends around the house, this is perhaps one of the simplest maintenance tasks. But once a while, something as simple as dumping a water bucket gets interesting, disgusting, and even intimidating.
Inevitably, we can’t always keep up with the water flow to ensure that the bucket is not full, so occasionally the water overflows. The small space between the wall of the house and the outdoor A/C unit is cool and damp most of the time. This attracts all kinds of creatures.
One morning, as I was about to grab the handle of the bucket, I noticed something was floating in the water. I took a closer look and saw a lizard swimming in it. The lizard probably had been in the water for a long time because its belly was bloated. The lithe and quick thing was dying. For a long time Florida resident, who sees numerous lizards big and small crawling everywhere, it was a sight that produces goose bumps all over one’s body. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. After some hesitation I found a small bucket and scooped the little thing out of the water. My hand was trembling as I was doing it because I was afraid that it would jump. In fact the lizard seemed to be almost dead, after I dumped it to the ground, it didn’t move. Its big mouth opened and closed slowly, seemed to be still trying to keep itself to breathe to keep itself from drowning.
Encounters with lizard happened more than once. That one was memorable because the lizard was relatively big, almost 3 inches long.
There were bigger things dropped into the bucket. The back of our house is a canal and there live many toads. When it rains, toads come out of the canal and wander around. Toads also like to live in dark and damp areas. The area around the A/C condensation water outlet is a perfect place for toads to stay. The bucket I’m using is a 5 gallon plastic bucket that was a paint container. So it’s at least a foot from the ground. But somehow one day a toad managed to drop into the bucket and because the water was not high enough, it couldn’t get itself out of the bucket.
If a drowning lizard induced goose bumps on my body, a big half pound toad made my hair stand up. I don’t know how long the toad had been in the bucket but when I saw it in a morning, it was still vigorously trying to get itself out of the bucket. This time I did not dare to do anything about the toad, so I just lifted the whole bucket and dumped everything in it into the canal.
The biggest thing I found in the bucket was a rat. When I saw such a thing, I gulped a big chunk of air. I didn’t even feel if I had goose bumps or my hair was erected. I felt a chill throughout my body. I stayed and stood there for quite some time. I was amazed at such a disgusting sight. I didn’t even want to touch the bucket, the rat could have crawled all over the bucket, including the handle.
In the end, I still had to deal with this. I couldn’t imagine how my wife would react if she saw this. The whole neighborhood would hear her scream if she did.
I looked in and the small eyes of the rat flashed back at me. It was definitely near its end of struggle. The wall of the bucket was all covered by the scratch marks. The rat was big, its body without the tail was about 6 inches long. It would have no problem for it to climb out of the bucket if there was enough water. But the water was just about half way. So the rat floated but couldn’t get hold of the rim. Like the lizard, the belly of the rat was all filled with water so it looked almost like a small balloon.
I found a pair of garden gloves and took the whole bucket to the canal and poured everything out on the grass. I didn’t want to just send the rat to the water. I was concerned about polluting the canal, although there are always all kinds of garbage in the canal. I was also somehow curious to see how the rat would react after being liberated. By now the fear and feeling of nausea had subsided and I wanted to make sure that the rat would not run back to my house.
But the rat was almost dead. It laid in the grass motionless. The only sign that it was still alive was that it was still breathing. I stood there for a few moments and then decided to leave it alone. If it lived, I saved a life. If it died, it’s a rat. Who cares if a rat dies.
After I came back from work, I went to the same spot, I saw nothing there. There wasn’t a dead rat. The bucket was still collecting water. Maybe it recovered itself and ran away. Maybe it got eaten by some other animals.
To this day, the scratch marks are still visible inside the bucket.
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