Make yourself at home

Housesitting seems easy, until raccoons and storms conspire against you

Patricia Graves, 22, sniffs lemon basil leaves in the garden of a home she housesat in June.
Patricia Graves, 22, sniffs lemon basil leaves in the garden of a home she housesat in June.

— If you’d seen Patricia Graves a few weeks ago, say, at a small Saturday evening party hosted by mutual friends, you’d have noticed a swollen red spot just above her right wrist.

If you’re more curious than courteous, like me, you’d have asked, Hey, what’s that?

Graves, a recent graduate of the University of Central Arkansas, agreed to housesit in June for a former professor who lives on Lake Conway and keeps two cats and seven chickens.

Well, one morning she went out to uncoop the chickens and purloin their eggs. She reached beneath the downy under carriage of one of the flightier ones, ZaZa, when the bird landed a powerful peck that broke the skin. Gathering eggs is only easy on Easter.

“I’m a city girl. Like, I do this stuff for fun, but I grew up in a suburb,” she says.

Housesitting - it requires no license and no particular skills. At its easiest, responsibilities are largely confined to being visible around the house, ostensibly to ward off trespassers, guard against theft, maybe water a few plants or care for a pet.

Some sitters are plied with free food and drink, and in the case of extended stays or special pet duties, may be given a small allowance.

Rita Henry of Little Rock, who’s retired, said she doesn’t do it anymore for less than $15 a day and sometimes negotiates for as much as $30 to $35. But then, it’s hardly housesitting what she does.

“There’s one house where I take care of dogs, bees, chickens and fish. I might clean a bit of the house, watch a kid or two for a half day. It can get really involved.”

Henry has built up a clientele for about a dozen years. Much of her work is for just a day or two.

“Thanksgiving, I may have as many as 10 houses. I get up at 5 a.m. and work to midnight going from house to house to house. You know, sometimes I feel like I’m just being tipped, in a way.”

She reports this income - “I do pay taxes, every penny.”

For Graves, caring for two cats, seven chickens and a garden was more work than she’d expected, especially since taking on her first full-time job post-baccalaureate. The chickens are unpenned before 8 every morning and cooped up again in the evening. Their quarters are inspected for raccoons and snakes, and of course, there’s the eggs. Even the garden has proved onerous because the sun has all but beaten the poor plants back into the earth.

Still, when this housesitting opportunity arose, she leaped at it. For one, she’s keenly interested in local food production, gardening and supporting small-market producers. For another, if not for housesitting, Graves would have moved back in with her parents and, frankly, after college, she was pleased with the transitional independence.

LIKE DATING SITES FOR SITTERS

The websites Housecarers.com and Housesitworld.com aim to match homeowners with sitters. The first group wants trustworthy people while the second, typically, wants to travel.

As of press time, Housecarers.com didn’t list available sitters in Arkansas for Arkansas homes.

Judy Neff is willing to housesit in Arkansas but lives in Gulf Shores, Ala. She’s had a profile on Housecarers.com for three years and says there’s a load of opportunities - “many more than you could possibly do” - out there, and for very agreeable arrangements.

“I’ve had unbelievable homeowners - sophisticated, classy, and some of them are housesitters. I’ve housesat for a couple in Fairhope, Ala., while they were housesitting someplace else.”

Richard Norman of Destin, Fla., also listed Arkansas in his Housecarers.com profile. Norman is a retired Miami police officer - a fact that can be checked, and one that bodes well - and wants to travel the country with his wife.

“Some of these homes they describe and show pictures of, they are incredible. Places I could never afford to stay,” he says.

CATASTROPHE AVERTED

Housesitting calls to mind an easy arrangement usually counted in days, not weeks, and measured by the sitter’s ability to stay the course, not risk life and limb. That might be the assumption but it’s not always the case. State Game and Fish Commissioner Ron Duncan of Springdale recalls a time about 10 years ago when his ranching parents agreed to “sit” for a neighbor just down the lane.

“It was Christmas Eve and a snowstorm, a huge snowstorm, was under way. ... My father decided he had better check on his friend’s house while we could still get there.”

Sure enough “a large tree branch had fallen on a wood stove vent on top of the house.His friend had left a slow-burning fire in his large wood stove, which was rigged to keep an entire house warm. It was Christmas Eve night in the countryside, [so] there was no help to be had. The house was filling with smoke and the tree branch was in danger of catching fire.”

With his father in his 70s, it fell to Duncan - then about 50 - to climb the steep roof slick with snow and ice in whiteout conditions and yank the tree branch off and repair the vent. To make matters worse, he has a fear of heights.

“All turned out well as I removed the branch and straightened the vent and got down from the 30-foot roof without injury or frostbite, but rather than any awards for heroics, my father never said much of anything afterward and my mother was angry ... because we were late for playing card games.”

CATASTROPHE IMMINENT

Graves’ housesitting stint was mostly uneventful, though her imagination would work overtime.

“I was more afraid of some wild thing getting the chickens - like the nasty raccoon that was more interested in the chicken scratch than the chickens - or that the cats would run away - which one did, but came back, thank goodness - than a break-in or fire. I’m generally more worried that I will mess up than that other people will interfere with my life.”

In the end, the worst thing about the gig was the drive into work (Stone Ward, downtown Little Rock), while “the best thing about this housesitting is having a space of my own,” and the next best thing was eating fresh eggs in the morning with tomatoes and rosemary harvested from the front yard.

It could have been worse.

Sally Mengel of Little Rock has had some experiences.

“I have had to take care of an elderly dog once. It was like doggy hospice, and I had to carry him around from room to room to outside to upstairs every three hours.

“And I have dogsitted for four dogs. The house had cameras in every room - the woman would call me when she didn’t see me in the house - and I also got locked out and had to climb through the doggie door. The cleaning lady saw me and thought I was a robber and called the cops on me.” For Graves, what was most remarkable was how pleasant the whole experience of housesitting was. Despite her allergies to the cats and the unpleasant humidity rolling off Lake Conway, it was wonderful.

“It was strange because I was finally getting used to the place and the routine of everything when it was time to pack up and move again.”

HomeStyle, Pages 33 on 07/28/2012

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