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| This squirrel had the audacity to conk out on my porch. |
Lately, I’ve been noticing a rash of dead animal postings on
my Facebook news feed. For instance, one friend recently discussed the tragic
evisceration of one of her chickens. She pinned a raccoon as the prime suspect.
Then another friend shared a picture of a field mouse she’d sucked up with her
Dyson. Then another friend, who relocated to Texas, noted that she’d finally
seen an armadillo – dead in the middle of a road.
And then, apparently, it was my turn.
On Thursday, I came home to find a dead squirrel stretched
out under one of our front porch chairs. I don’t know how long he’d
been there. I briefly considered summoning my husband home from work. Instead,
I opted for the passive-aggressive maneuver of sending him a picture of the
prostrate squirrel with the caption, “ARRRGGGGG!”
When my in-laws came over later to babysit, they talked –
rather anemically, I thought – about fetching a shovel from the garage. “I’ll
take care of it after my run,” I said, secretly hoping that, in addition to
feeding my three kids and refereeing their fights, my in-laws would also muster
the energy to deal with the stiff on the porch.
But when I returned two hours later, I was crestfallen to
see the little fellow still laying there. Flies were starting to alight. So I did
what any sensible person would do: I donned five layers of Target bags on each
hand, reached under the chair, and chucked the bugger into another, quadruple
set of plastic sacks, before tying it all off and tossing the package into one
of our outdoor trash cans.
Then I started to have second thoughts. The squirrel died
sometime on Thursday. Our garbage pick-up day is Monday. I’ve watched enough of
Kenneth Branagh in the somewhat underwhelming English version remake of the
Swedish crime series, “Wallander,” to know that no good comes from leaving
rotting corpses unattended. Imagining our metal pail teeming with maggots, I
suspected I would have trouble sleeping.
Coincidentally, my husband was leaving the next morning for
a trip with his college buddies to see the Florida-LSU game. After the kids
were asleep and as Jeff was throwing t-shirts into his roller bag, I thought
the moment ripe to suggest he should do something about that dead squirrel in
the trash. To my amazement, he agreed. My husband must have been awfully desperate
to get out of town.
“What did you do with it?” I nervously queried when Jeff came
back about 15 minutes later. He rather excitedly narrated how he’d gripped a
flashlight under his neck, dug a shallow grave in the muck behind our garage,
and dumped in the body. I guess my husband finally got his “Sopranos’” moment. But
I was starting to feel a bit guilty.
Poor little guy – I mean the squirrel, not Jeff.
Maybe we should’ve at least said a prayer or something.
