At night, scary wildlife comes out to play in the chemical factory

On-call Welcome to On-Call, our semi-regular-ish weekend feature in which readers share experiences that happened late at night, in odd places.

This week, the tale of reader "IT Gnome" who tells us "I work on call for a chemical factory, and it wouldn't look out of place at night in a zombie film."

"It's perhaps the bleakest scariest place I have ever visited," he says. "As you can imagine it's dangerous."

How scary?

"I cannot convey how scary wondering around a large three plant site is, especially at night as you only tend to see one or two people at the very most," says IT Gnome. "I have scared myself senseless on more than one occasion reading the labels on various tankers that can only convey death."

Which brings us to one particular night on which our hero was asked to replace a switch in a small brick built substation.

IT Gnome says the building "housed the usual scary looking big switch operated electrical things like you see in cold war submarine bases, as well as a rickety old comms cabinet."

"When I started the job it was dark outside, replacing the switch took ages, the old one seemingly welded into place. As the clock ticked on I started to feel I was been watched."

"And I was, by massive gulls. The kind that steal children [or your bag of fish 'n' chips -Weekend Ed] off the beach."

Gulls do that? Yikes. IT Gnome continues:

"Five of them had managed to shuffle into this brick shed and were now advancing on me. I was panicky and was pinned to the wall. No matter what I did they stood there hissing at me."

"The good news is I had fixed the switch, the bad news is I had no phone signal and the site radio was behind the angry gulls. It took about forty five mins to negotiate with the scary birds."

IT Gnome now has an interesting item in his go-bag for night-time jobs.

"I now take bread with me on site," he told us.

What's happened to you in odd places and/or at odd times? Share your story by sending me a mail and we'll make you a star. A G-list star. ®

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