Wizard of Ooze

Ooze is an evocative word, a visceral word, a word that is happily noun and verb simultaneously.  A word that makes my six year old boy shriek with joy and elicits an "ewww!" from all three of my girls.  It is not a word I ever expected to hear describing a shower in my inn.  For anyone who does home repair or is in the trades, I'll feed you some clues and let you have fun figuring out, in Paul Harvey's words, "the rest of the story."

So there I was, doing the front desk thing, having a good time when Mrs. B in room Hill House 3 approached me as soon as she saw it was quiet (much appreciated by the way).  "You might want to take a look at the shower in HH3.  There's something oozing between the floor and wall."  I challenge you to keep a neutral face when confronted by that kind of news and think of something non-noncommittally apologetic yet sincere to say.  Especially when you just know to the tip of your toes that the person is telling the truth, and when you know with equal certainty that there's no way short of natural disaster that it can be true.  Or at least you hope so.

Mrs. B said they'd be out for the day and as soon as I saw them pull away I went over to check.  At first I looked at the transition from the bathroom floor to the shower pan.  There was nothing out of the ordinary there.  I looked around the rest of the bathroom.  It's one of several remaining old-style bathrooms and not my favorite, but other than that there was definitely nothing oozing or that looked like it ever had oozed.

I figured that since I was there with cleaning compounds, brushes and cloths, I may as well clean the bath for my very busy housekeepers (and hope that I found a clue).  Here's the first clue.  I moved the bath mat and found a corner of it had been used to wipe something brown and scuzzy looking.  So now I had visual proof that Mrs. B wasn't totally imagining things.  2d hint:  I rinsed the bathmat, and it came completely clean.

But still nothing obvious overall, so I got to work from the top down.  Third hint--location.  When  I got to the transition from the shower walls to the base pan and saw a small fleck of something brown and nasty looking where I had just wiped my cloth.  I got out the turbo toothbrush and worked it into the seam.  My very first reaction would have done my girls proud.  "Ewww!!"  My second reaction was unbelief that Mrs. B was so courteous at the desk.  What I saw was shocking.  It looked like something from a horror flick as I worked at it--brown with the texture of old scotch tape.

Needless to say I was appalled.  But puzzled too.  We use a combination of bleach and Comet cleanser to clean our bathrooms.  Nothing survives this stuff yet I had what I kept thinking was living or recently living matter coming out of the seam.  More thoughts of "ewww" and more thinking.  It left no mark on my cloth once I'd rinse it.  It's texture reminded of the skin that forms on top of old paint (another hint).  And here's my last clue before I give away the answer.  I used my grout removal knife and worked out a nice long piece, several inches in length, rather rubbery.  It was then, amid thoughts of "gross" and more "ewws" that the light came on.

Construction adhesive!  From when the shower had first been assembled.  The stuff is only one step away from waterproof, but over time breaks down when it's wet (and I'm pretty sure cleaning solvents don't help its stability either).  BTW, it's also brown.

Luckily for me, the Bs were as incredulous as I was and had figured out on their own that it wasn't an ordinary kind of hideous Sugar Hill slime mold.  They just didn't know what it actually was--other than gross.  So now I'm their "Wizard of Ooze" (their phrase).  And I fervently hope that I'm never, ever, ever again, called upon to exercise my magical prowess at yucky stuff identification.

Thanks for reading,

Lon Henderson
Innkeeper