November 09, 2009
Monday Morning's Frost
Filed under: Life
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Is that upturned black plastic bucket familiar? IT SHOULD BE. No matter how hard I tried to dispose of the eight headless, footless and skinless rabbits I found myself back to square one. (WITH SQUARE ONE BEING "A BUCKET OF PUTRID, DECAYING CARCASSES SWIMMING IN THEIR OWN OUTRAGEOUSLY RANK DECOMPOSITION JUICES".)
First the weather wasn't right. For an entire week. (No, really!) So the rabbits festered in their plastic grave, sitting, breaking down, occasionally getting chewed on by neighbor cats. (CATS! THIS HOUSE IS NOT THE FOLLOWING: YOUR BATHROOM, YOUR HUNTING GROUND AND YOUR PERSONAL ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT WILDLIFE BUFFET.) The stench was incredible.
After an entire week of non-stop rain I threw my hands up into the air and admitted defeat. "FINE! FINE! WE'LL GO OUT IN THE COLD AND RAIN AND GET WET. FINE! YOU'VE WON, NATURE, YOU'VE WON. CONGRATULATIONS." In the unforgiving Scottish rain - just before eight in the evening - I hoisted a container filled with the liquefied remains of eight dead rabbits in the trunk of the car, carefully wedging it between several buckets containing rocks.
It was freezing. (I was wet.) It was pitch black. (I was wet.) The car absolutely fucking //REEKED// and I wondered how far I could drive while holding my breath for as long as humanly possible. (Did I already mention that I was wet?) Italics, just as unenthusiastic about the situation, crawled into the car. (He was wet, too.) "OKAY, FINE, LET'S GET THIS OVER WITH," I grumbled. The car - which sat in the cold, rain and damp, unstarted, unused and unloved for a week - refused to turn its engine.
Sitting in the dark soaking wet, miserable, cold and TRYING NOT TO BREATHE, NOT EVEN A LITTLE my less than spectacular mood flat-lined. "YOU'RE JOKING, RIGHT?" I asked the car, the world, the Universe. It wasn't joking (which was good because I TOTALLY wasn't in the mood). After 10 minutes of grinding the engine I called it quits and hauled the effing bucket of dissolving rabbits back OUT from the trunk, back INTO the rain and returned it to the outside "greenhouse" (bonsai house).
By the time the weather evened out and stopped giving my temperamental car excuses for not starting the eight headless, footless and skinless bodies had reduced to a toxic soup with a mouthwatering aroma of raw, rotting sewage. When I yanked on the rickety metal handle the contents of the bucket swished, slooshed and splashed - way too much action for hauling, hoisting and transporting.
"FINE, YOU DON'T WANT TO LEAVE THE HOUSE? FINE. I TRIED TO BE NICE, I TRIED TO SHARE IN THE SPOILS, BUT, CLEARLY, YOU HAVE NO DESIRE TO LEAVE THIS PROPERTY."
And with that I quickly flipped the bucket'o'rabbits upside down, trapping the broken bodies between the earth and the container. The blood and fetid body juices ran off the animals and were drawn into the ground at the exact spot where Italics and I, earlier in the year, had outside summer sex. To ensure none of the opportunistic neighborhood cats could get to the jumble of carcasses I chucked a heavy brick onto the upturned bottom which should keep them deterred until Spring. (<- When I plan to go back for the bones.)
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Bright, November morning sunshine filtering through the bare butterfly and lilac bushes.
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The water's begun freezing in Mr. Awesome's abandoned (TWENTY YEARS AND COUNTING!) "pond" project.
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The Shango Tree altar remains yet unscathed, but its only a matter of time before our visiting badger returns and leaves another horrific scene of senseless gardening violence and altar desecration.
