Keyword: packrat
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Neighbors had complained before about Mary Minter's unkempt yard, littered with weeds and debris. But that was nothing compared to the interior of the 38-year-old's Sandy Springs bungalow, as firefighters discovered earlier Tuesday. Minter had to be extricated from her home by four rescue personnel following a 911 call from an unidentified source. It took the firefighters 40 minutes to wade through "chest-high" debris that clogged the hallways of the modest residence, located in the Cherokee Park neighborhood just off Roswell Road. Sandy Springs Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Scarbrough described the smell as "intolerable," though he didn't have to navigate...
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AMSTERDAM, Ohio -- Deputies found garbage wall to wall inside the Amsterdam home and now one parent is facing charges. The 10-year-old girl and 6-year-old boy are in the care of a foster parent tonight and the father is facing a charge of child endangerment. Sheriff Fred Abdalla said me he did not arrest the mother because she is pregnant with the couples third child.
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Attention, pack rats: science may have figured you out. Researchers say they've found an area of the brain that seems to govern the urge to collect. For most people, collecting is a perfectly healthy behavior. It's an outlet for expressing passion for just about anything, such as stamps, wine, art, shoes, or Elvis memorabilia. Collecting is also common among animals, and not just for food. It's been observed in creatures great and small, from mammals to insects. For instance, some birds can't resist aluminum and bright objects, while hamsters gather glass beads when given the chance. But in rare cases,...
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165 Pets Taken From Calif. Ex-Mayor's Home RIALTO, Calif. - Responding to neighbor complaints about a home's stench, authorities removed 135 dogs and 30 cats from a urine- and feces-soaked home where a rotting Great Dane was found earlier in a malfunctioning freezer. Charlotte Spadaro, a former mayor of Beverly Hills, had been rescuing animals for three years and kept them at her South Acacia Avenue home. Authorities monitoring the residence since discovering the Great Dane in January finally got a search warrant to remove the animals Thursday. "I think the city is out to have them massacred," Spadaro said....
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Greensboro, NC -- An Irving Park home has been condemned in a case animal control officers are calling "extremely unsanitary". Investigators say the homeowner was picking up roadkill and keeping it in her refrigerator, freezer and in plastic bags behind her house. "[There was] just trash, filth and debris throughout the house," says animal control officer Jennifer Welch. "There wasn't anywhere in the house that wasn't covered in it." Welch says the homeowner's sister called animal control after the house was condemned by the city, seeking help in the cleanup. Investigators say the animal carcasses were removed last weekend and...
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Three computers...$2000 worth of software. This stuff extends about 12 feet above....I know where everything is....I have no life...at least during the daytime. I still have my old 555mgh Compaq from 1998...runs perfectly.. 1999...just moved in... 2004 I'm a packrat when it comes to hardware...
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<p>For 25 years, a difficult-neighbor problem plagued Curtis and Elaine Colvin of Seattle. The neighbor's home and lawn resembled a junkyard. Finally, last spring, the elderly man was taken out of state by relatives.</p>
<p>Konstantinos Apostolou bought the house — and sent in five men to clear the floor-to-ceiling junk. "It was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life," says his son, George Apostolou. There was nowhere to walk, except for a narrow "goat path" connecting the rooms. The men hauled out seven Dumpsters' worth of clothes, books, magazines, spoiled food, firewood, car parts, tires, bank statements and 50-year-old tax records. "I feel bad for the guy," says Apostolou. "I'm sure he was ill."</p>
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The cases never cease to fascinate: reclusive people trapped by their own accumulations, in rooms made unlivable by floor-to-ceiling heaps of newspapers, books and saved objects — from twist ties to grand pianos.Some pass into legend, like the Collyer brothers, "the hermit hoarders of Harlem," who in 1947 were buried by the piles of urban junk that filled their four-story Harlem brownstone. But even less extreme examples, like that of the Bronx man rescued on Monday after being trapped for two days under an avalanche of magazines and catalogs, haunt the public imagination.Such compulsive hoarding is being recognized as a...
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