What Happened to the Library

It is early Tuesday morning. Gale likes to get to work early. It is 6 AM and the library doesn’t even open until 8. She likes the moments of silence in the building before anyone arrives. She finds it peaceful. Her best friend Per likes to argue that “A library should always be peaceful no matter what time of day. If it is not then Gale, you might not be doing your job right”. Per always finds Gale’s dedication to her work to be amusing but unnecessary at times. The public libraries in general are a dying system not to mention in a small town like this one in northern Minnesota. But nonetheless Gale dedicates her days to keeping this library open. She wanted to make sure that everyone could get the opportunity to open a book and breathe in that old book smell. Gale got her keys out of her pocket and let herself in the front door of the library. It was a cold winter day so she fumbled with the keys for a while before managing to open the cold metal door.

She has a set routine that she follows each morning when she opens the library; Open the door, turn on the lights, walk around each section of books and make sure things are just as she left it the night before. But this morning was different. As soon as she stepped foot in the building she knew something was off. She sets down her purse and begins to do her daily rounds of the place. She wanders through each section and as she passes one of the non-fictions aisles she notices a few books have been knocked over. 

“Who did this”? She said out loud to herself. She wonders if someone broke in. Only hours ago she had left the building and she knows she did a final check of the place before closing. 

“Ugh! Kids these days have no respect for literature”. She assumes that some kids must have broken in and made a mess of the place. At least it was still early and she would have time to clean up before opening. 

Gale reaches down to pick up the discarded books when out of nowhere she hears a creature chattering and hissing. Startled by the noises, Gale stumbles onto the ground. She stares in shock as a family of racoons jump out of the bookshelf and scurry under the door of the men’s restroom. Racoons in this town were quite common. As the days get closer and closer to the deep dark winter the racoons must find shelter in warm areas. The library was known as the public building with heating in town. Teens would gather there after school and pretend to study while actually just chatting with friends. Before all the cafes and bars popped up in town, the library was known as the popular hangout place for all people. Evidently with all the changes occurring in the neighborhood the library was no longer a hotspot for people but rather a warm place for raccoons to make their dens in the winter. Though Gale has a soft spot for animals she loves her library more than anything and would not allow it to become a hotel for animals. 

Gale checks her watch. It shows thirteen minutes past 6. This gives Gale a little under 2 hours to have everything ready before the library opens. Still lying on the floor from when the racoons made her stumble, Gale takes a deep breath in and out. Now she must evict the raccoons. 

For a sixty-two year old Gale thought she was in alright shape but getting off of the ground was still a challenge for her. The first step in her raccoon eviction adventure was standing up. She would normally need the support of a chair or bench to get up but there was nothing close enough to help. “I could call Per”. She thought but she had left her phone in her purse which was still on the table where she left it. Ok, it was time to come up with a plan. She would first roll over from her back to her front. From there she could make it to her hands and knees and then she would figure it out from there. To roll over she tries to build up momentum. Rocking from left to right, left to right, and finally on her third try she was able to build enough momentum to roll onto her stomach. She then puts her hands on the ground and pushes up to her knees. From there she takes a break to look around at her options: a bookshelf she could use to pull herself up but that risks the bookshelf falling over creating a domino effect with all the bookshelves around her, a rocking chair roughly a 20 foot crawl ahead of her but would not be stable enough to support pulling herself to standing, and her phone which was approximately in reach from the ground but a 40 foot crawl away. She didn’t like any of those options and was already physically tired so she knew she had to think quickly. 

She looks at the books on the bottom shelf next to her. They were all large science textbooks. 

“Sorry books. I thank you for your help”. She whispers at the books while frantically pulling them off the shelves. Staking one book on top of the next she builds 2 nice towers of books. She places the largest and heaviest books at the bottom and then slowly builds up from there. 

Eventually she is left with two book towers about an arm length in height from the ground which she then places her hands on the books and uses them to push herself up to standing. She was impressed by her quick thinking ability and agility to stand up from the floor. Her pride was short-lived when she tripped on the books she had just stacked. She instinctively grabbed onto the bookshelves for balance. She was semi-successful in regaining her balance but in return toppled the bookshelf over creating a loud and destructive domino effect with all the other bookshelves in the area. 

She stood there gasping in horror at the mess she had made. Hundreds of books to put back in place. There was no way she would be finished by 8. Gale shuffles over to the table on which she had left her purse. She reaches inside it for her cellphone. She begins to type in the numbers to phone for her best friend Per. He is always willing to help her. Not to mention he is 8 years younger than her and therefore more physically fit than she. Maybe he could help lift the fallen bookshelves. She listened to the ring of her phone and then it went to voicemail. Per was never the type of person to wake up early. It was no doubt to Gale that he was still sleeping at half past six. She left a voicemail.

“Good morning Per. I hope my call finds you well”. She always started her messages as such. Despite being in the midst of absolute chaos there was always time for pleasantries. “I am here at the library and erm… there seems to be a bit of a problem. Could really use your assistance now if you’re not too busy. Thank you dear… This is Gale by the way”. She hangs up the phone and puts it back in her purse. Gale looks around at the mess around her. Fallen bookshelves, books out of place and raccoon poop scattered throughout the floor which she had only just noticed. It was time to clean up.

“Where should I start”? She asked herself. 

The raccoons seem to be the most pressing issue at the moment. With them there who knows what other ruckus may occur. When she last saw the raccoons there were about three or four of them that had scurried off into the men’s restroom. Raccoons can be dangerous. They have sharp claws and teeth that they can use against predators. Gale has never come in contact with a live raccoon before so she isn’t exactly sure how to go about this. Across from the men’s restroom was a gender neutral restroom. Gale goes inside and finds some supplies she could use as gear. She puts on a pair of rubber gloves that go up to the elbow, a mop bucket she uses as a helmet and a fire extinguisher to use as a weapon. She then exits the bathroom and finds all the books she can about raccoons. She reads about them for a while, learning about their likes, dislikes and other relevant qualities. After she feels like she is sufficiently prepared, she approaches the men’s restroom. 

She feels the adrenaline rushing through her body. She has not felt this alive in a while. As she gets closer to the men’s room she listens to the chatter of the raccoons. What could they be talking about? Perhaps they were making a plan of their own. What kind of schemes were they discussing? Gale lets her imagination wander. Three raccoons sitting at a table with each other. One is smoking a cigar. The other two are playing cards. They discuss their days at work and their concern for finding their next home. Gale briefly feels bad for the raccoons. She knows they just need a warm place to live. Just like everyone. She shakes off any guilt she feels for the raccoons when she remembers the state her library is in. A few weeks earlier she heard talk of the city shutting down her library. Gale would never want to risk her job, at least not until she retires. An incident like this would not help. So she decided to keep this a secret. No one needed to know about the mess caused today. She just needed to clean everything up in time and then everything would be fine. Though she was afraid of the raccoons she could not call animal control. They would surely alert the city of the problem. No, she will have to deal with the problem herself. 

She kicked the door to the men’s room open with force. Gale let out a loud battle cry and ran in. She saw the raccoons gathered in the corner sleeping. They were not sitting at a table playing cards as she earlier thought. She ran at them and started spraying the fire extinguisher. The raccoons quickly skittered away and Gale ran after them. She chased them towards the front exit door which she had left open. As she ran, the bucket she was using as a helmet fell down over her eyes. She couldn’t see a thing but that didn’t stop her from running full speed in the direction of the front door. Gale knew the library like the back of her hand so she didn’t have concerns about finding her way. Not to mention this all happened so quickly she didn’t have time to think anyway. But what she didn’t see was her best friend Per walking through the open front door. You could see the shock and confusion on his face when he saw an army of raccoons followed by Gale with a bucket on her head and a fire extinguisher in her hands running directly at him. The raccoons manage to sneak past him but Gale, with the bucket covering her eyes, didn’t see Per and smacked right into him, knocking them both over. Gale takes off her bucket to see Per on the floor in front of her. He looks first at Gale then at the mess of the library behind her and then back at Gale. Behind him she could see the rustling of the bushes as the raccoons went back to their homes in the cold. The two of them just stare at each other for a moment without saying a word. The absurdness of the situation sets in and simultaneously Per and Gale laugh. It started with a short chuckle then grew into a full blown uncontrollable howl of laughter. Once they were able to control their laughter they helped each other up from the ground and began putting the library back to its original state.