I’d been smelling gas off and on in the kitchen for a few days. But when my friend walked into the apartment yesterday morning saying, "Oooh you better call Keyspan." I decided I better call Keyspan.

Within an hour, the Keyspan emergency technician showed up and went to work. She moved our stove – revealing years of behind the stove grease and lost utensils. "You’ve got mouse droppings back there," she said handing me a flashlight. "You wanna look?"

The Gas Lady discovered a gas leak in the oven. "Probably caused by one of those mice biting a hole in one of these pipes." she said. "It’s an appliance problem."

I called Ed, the local appliance repair guy. "I’m in a meeting, I can’t talk," he said. "Will call you back." The Keyspan woman said she’d have to turn off the gas. "I’ll come back after the stove is fixed."

When she wasn’t kneeling on the floor investigating behind the stove or sticking her head in the oven, the Gas Lady seemed intrigued by our things. She liked our globes – we have more than 50 – which are displayed prominently throughout the apartment.

"You make that?" she said pointing at my friend’s huge painting of an owl. "No, my friend did that?" I didn’t explain that it’s a huge portrait of Hedwig, Harry Potter’s owl, which we used for "Pin the Tail on Hedwig" at  Teen Spirit’s Harry Potter birthday party when he was  turning 8.

The Gas Lady commented on a huge photo portrait of a man and child in the foyer. "That’s big. Is it your husband?" I explained that it was not. "We don’t even know them. My husband took that picture."

Since she was interested in all the large pictures, I showed her the photograph in the living room – a 3 x 3 foot portrait of a street person on Ludlow Street. "That’s nice," she said as she lifted up her equipment and headed downstairs.

Ed, the appliance guy, called at 8 p.m. "Did you call earlier about a stove?" He said he’d try to get here tomorrow or the next day. "I’ll see what I can do."

Stove Photo by Phrenophile