My husband and I drew up an agreement to cover ourselves when we rent our house to our son and four of his zoo keeper friends this summer while we high tail it to England to look after my mother.

Already that sounds like a disaster just waiting to happen but believe me, we had met the young people and they seemed mature, responsible and genuinely excited to be moving into our beautiful 3,000+ square foot home.

We fed them dinner, endless cups of tea and tolerated them bringing friends and parents to check out their new future abode.  We had agreed on the rent and the method of payment and they had even laid claim to the rooms and mentally moved furniture around to accommodate the modest amounts they would be adding to our furnished  house.  In their minds they repainted rooms and refinished the kitchen floor.  We talked about pets and the folly of bringing home baby elephants to bottle feed, we talked about the provender we would be leaving in the pantry, the frozen foods in the freezer and the perishables in the refrigerator.  We touched on car pooling and who would get the second space in the garage, we cautioned about leaving the air conditioning on 24/7 and we outlined the bills we would be responsible for.  W talked up the privileges of a large family home with a pool and the big outdoors just beyond the back fence.

So we wrote an agreement asking them to commit to a year and if they couldn’t, to at least help us find a replacement if they had to move out for some unforeseen reason.  One by one they baulked.  I have no idea what they were expecting, a hand shake?

“Yes, sure, you can live in our house, pay us when you can, run up our utilities, eat our food, use our furniture, play in our pool, wade in our creek.  Leave when you get fed up with the commute.  You’re welcome, anytime dude.”

Each one of these young adults has a degree, and a full time job at the zoo and is currently living in an apartment which has a lease, or a contract, or an agreement, whatever they call it.  They have signed said pieces of paper (which may be worthless in court), but have they ever read them?

My guess is, no!  We took them by surprise and for the first time in their very short lives they actually paid attention to what they were signing.  They got spooked!  I suppose this could have happened the day before we were leaving, at least we have six weeks, now five, to find renters…