This past Saturday I had resolved to get some serious yard work done. Rehearsals for the Good Friday service weren't needed anymore, considering Good Friday had come and gone, so I had the Saturday free. I started by trimming the bushes around the front and side of my house, with the use of a hedge trimmer that I borrowed from my bro-in-law.
After that I blew all of the clippings and leaves from the landscaping rocks that surround my house and garage, and also from where they get stuck in the bottom of the fence that surrounds my backyard (thanks again to the bro-in-law for letting me borrow his leaf blower).
A couple weeks prior to my spring cleaning, however, I had noticed a black garbage bag located on my western-most property line, amongst some leaves and other debris. At the time I wrote it off as being a bag of leaves that the neighbor had tossed there at some point. I didn't think much of it, except to make a mental note to clean it up when I got around to my cleaning. I had planned to take care of it and a bunch of other leaves and junk that had collected back in that area.
After my hedge trimming and leaf blowing fun, I decided to head back to clean up the bag and the leaves that surrounded it. As I approached the bag, I detected a seriously foul stench. As I moved in for a closer look while holding my breath, I noticed a very large bone lying on the ground next to the bag. Several other large bones were protruding up from out of the bag as well. My first reaction was to notice that these were BIG bones. They definitely weren't from a chicken or a dog (what would dog bones be doing in a garbage bag on my property anyway?). The conclusion that I came to was that these were people-sized bones. The bag had been torn open and some of the bones had been pulled out, presumably by neighborhood dogs. Not wanting to disturb what could potentially be a crime scene, I called the cops.
A police officer arrived shortly after my call, and we walked back to the bag. He didn't seem to be too concerned about disturbing a potential crime scene, and he went right up to the bag and tore it open. Amongst the bones that protruded from the bag, there were now two deer hooves that also stuck up and out of the bag. Someone had gutted, butchered, and boned a deer, shoved its remains in a garbage bag, and dumped it on my property!
The officer and I came to the conclusion that the dumping probably took place last November and was subsequently snowed over, and I didn't notice it until a couple weeks ago after all the snow had melted (what's weird and somewhat unsettling is that I probably walked by the bag a hundred times during the winter months, never knowing it was there). Also, the officer said that the deer was most likely poached. Why else would someone have dumped it and not disposed of it properly? I was not happy. What jerk would do something like this?!
To make the discovery all the more cheery, the officer told me the city maintenance department was closed for the weekend, and wouldn't be able to come by to pick it up until the following Monday. Goody! I got to have the deer carcass on my property for another two days!
Fast forward to today (Monday): a guy in a city truck came through my alley and I helped him load the smelly thing into his truck bed. He kept mumbling something about "The Great White Hunter," (seriously). After he left, I noticed that there was still a bone sitting on the ground, which I proceeded to pick up with a stick and put in my trash, where it sits even now, stinking.
Now rewind back to Saturday again. After my gruesome discovery, Beetz and the Fergeson arrive home after being at a friend's birthday party. They to play in the yard while I continue to do yard work. After a while, Betsy beckons me over to her to look at something. There in the middle of my yard is a field mouse, squished flat as a pancake. Where did that come from, and how did it get so flat?! I picked it up and threw it in the trash. So as I write this, there are currently two dead things in my garbage can.
Needless to say, two corpses on my property in one day was certainly enough for me for a while.
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