Under the Big Top

"I see bug people."

The B&B next door to us got tented the other day, which affected us in a small way. The exterminators needed to get into our backyard to assemble the tenting, and they needed to partially disassemble the fence between the two properties. During all of this, the B&B was vacant, of course, so we had no neighbors for a few days apart from the fearless guys climbing all over the roof of the buildings next door.

The big, brightly colored tent lent a festive atmosphere to the neighborhood. It's made out of square pieces clamped together with oversize clothespins. First, the installers put padded scraps of carpeting on the chimneys, roof corners, and other sharp projections. Then they draped the tent over the roof and down the sides, finally weighting it down at the bottom with big sandbags. Because there's no easement between our property and theirs, they needed to get into our backyard to stretch the tent across the back side of the B&B. That's no big deal, and the installers were very nice about not disrupting anything or trampling any plants.

There are two places where our community fence abuts their building, however, and the installers had to cut this away to make room for the tent. (Otherwise, the tent would have draped over the fence, which isn't airtight.) They'd warned us about this a few weeks ahead of time and, frankly, we were thrilled. We've never really liked that fence very much and we were kind of looking forward to replacing it anyway. The opportunity to tear it down and split the cost of rebuilding it suits us just fine.

The whole process took three days, which seems pretty normal. There's one day of tent assembly, one day of gassing the interior, and one day to disassemble it all again.

Their building is only two stories tall in most places, but it's almost as high as our three-story house because it's slightly uphill from us and it's built on a slightly taller foundation. We can look across to their roof, or slightly down onto their second-floor guest rooms. Even so, it's pretty high up and I'm impressed that the installers can scamper about on that roof with no trouble. It's a long way down. but maybe the big padded tent material would make a good cushion.