For Rent: The Little Yellow House

Furniture-less backyard gives a whole new meaning to ground beef.

Do you want a place full of excitement? We have the right fit for you. You’ll get to wake up to the pattering of tiny feet: mice! These furry friends enjoy crawling up from the cabinet under the kitchen sink, and, due to the several holes we failed to plug with tinfoil and duct tape, will likely nibble through the foods you're particularly excited to eat. Note: these are an intelligent breed of mice unfooled by snap traps. You will need to buy sticky traps. If you’re humane, you’ll run the trapped ones over in your car and scrape the guts off your tire with a snow shovel.

But enough about experiences -- we’ll get down to the hard facts.

Let’s start with the attic bedroom. Special feature: an unfurnished crawl space that remains a soul-chilling temperature, even in the summer, and looks like the place animals go to curl up and die. We know you may want to keep the hammock, which my roommate, a grown woman, slept in, but it’s not included. We will also be taking the frame-less mattress on the floor, which I, a grown woman, slept on.

All other rooms have the vitality of an accounting firm.

A fridge artifact: Months-old rice no longer needs a bowl to keep its shape.

We’ll move on to amenities. Stove? Yep, in working order despite the rotten nacho cheese scent that once wafted from its grates. Don’t worry -- we’ve soaked the mysterious orange liquid up with maxi pads. A fridge? Of course, though the door’s shelf has a cute habit of popping out and spilling your condiments on the floor. Also, beware of the bottom right crisper. We tried to scrape the spoiled onion skin off, but Scrub Daddies can only do so much. Dishwasher? Sure, but we didn’t own enough plates to run it, so it might be stale from sitting for a year. A washer and dryer? You’re in luck -- the landlord installed used news ones after the originals broke down a month within move-in. We didn’t have clean clothes for weeks -- but yours will smell like a damn springtime meadow. Thermostats? The downstairs one is in perfect condition if you like oscillating between losing your toes to frostbite and trying to sleep in Hell’s armpit. The upstairs one is as functional as the carbon monoxide detector, which is to say, not functional at all.

But the house has more than amenities that will suit your most basic human needs. It has personality. For example, 72 outlets, 40 functioning ones. The basement includes a freezer the size of a walk-in closet and can fit up to six bodies. The roof has a chimney. The inside of the house doesn’t, but it’s the thought that counts. And the best feature, of course, is the expansive deck connected to the second level. Unfortunately no door to the deck exists, so to reach it, you’ll have to walk outside the house like a peasant. Hack: you may also climb through the bedroom window.

Frodo: Voted housemate who poops on the upstairs carpet most often,

Now that we’ve moved to the outside of the house, let me tell you about the grass. It’s dead. We killed it from shoveling and parking on it over the winter -- not for fun, I assure you, but because we had five cars and three garage spots in a city where overnight street parking is illegal. But some of the yard includes lucious, knee-length grass since the landlord never returned the lawn mower. And let’s not forget: This is Minnesota -- snow will blanket the neglect eight out of the twelve months. Bonus: We left you a present under the deck, or five Hefty bags full of leaves and twigs we forgot to compost last fall. We were also kind enough to scoop up the complete collection of dogshit left by Frodo, our shih tzu, and the crispy, burnt rag we flung outside after it started on fire wrapped around a rice bag in the microwave.

Garage Warning: It’s a feisty door that enjoys popping back open unbeknownst to you. This will be especially exciting if another homicide takes place a few doors down. Other times it will jam shut -- but only when your car is inside and you have to leave for work the next day.

The aforementioned saucy tree

Here’s another quality you can’t put a price tag on: the neighbors! Across from you: Tibetan monks who will take interest in you when you try to climb that saucy tree in the front yard. Also, they’re best friends with the Dalai Lama. To your right: a family with minimum three generations and puzzling dynamics -- and their curly-haired yapper, Bamboo, who will prevent you from entering your own yard. To your left: a Catholic church with bells that ring twelve times a day and a fire station with trucks that blare even more. Plus the police station, which you’ll find out when they ticket you for parking on the street.

Our house may not be a mansion on Lake Minnetonka, but let’s face it: it’s all you can afford. Make me an offer and I’ll WD-40 the shit out of the squeaky doors.