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Friday, November 30, 2012

A trip to the compost bin

I have a compost bin.  Oh, how I love the compost bin.  I toss my leaves, kitchen scraps, the whole lovely deal in there.  I was glad to have it when I was ripping out my dead veggie stalks, no giant bag to wrestle it into needed whatsoever - just open the lid, toss it in.  

It was a dark and stormy cold night! 
A couple of nights ago beneath the full moon, I did not love my compost bin.

It was a night like any other around here, the depressing effect of Daylight Savings Time being wrought from my grip, creating black darkness akin to an Antarctic winter at the blessed time of 5:00 p.m.  I was making dinner and creating enough scraps to fertilize my upcoming spring garden for weeks: carrots, brussel sprout bottoms, parsnip shreddlings, green onion bits - it was as if I were trying to overflow my bin with the amount of things I was scraping and whittliing away at in the kitchen.

As the mountain grew inside of my flower pot I utilize for such a purpose as this, I decided it was about time to take it out and toss it in the bin.  The eggshells from breakfast were crushed to bits and yet scraps were still billowing over the top of the designated flower pot.

This task, although it may seem menial and simple to you, actually contains a bit of danger and risk.  You see, I have a dog.  If I were being nice, I would say that my dog has "special needs".  She is basically a diseased (she has EPI = her pancreas doesn't produce enzymes so I crush pig enzymes onto her food, wet it, digest the $50 dog food in the bowl and then give it to her so she can deposit twice as much as what I gave her onto my grass) German Shepherd who loves to squirt piles of doo in every possible direction at every possible chance.  In fact, my parent's dog was over last week for two days.  I picked up two piles of poo from their dog.  In that same time frame, I picked up about 24 piles of poo from my dog.  Actually, when I say "pick up", I mean a combination of "squirt with a high powered jet stream hose" and "scrape across the grass into a receptacle" as it is as solid as a preservative/high fructose corn syrup-laden chocolate Snack Pack. 

And even though I pick up such piles of sludge on an every-other-day basis and fill a paper Trader Joe's bag while muttering about how I'm sure she has the bowels of a bovine or perhaps equine animal and stretching my quaking fingers to the sky like an evil Sith lord while lamenting the day we chose to bring her home, they keep coming back at an insane pace.

It was with these thoughts that I crept outside to the bin.

My backyard seemed to me a possible minefield.

The full moon helped a little as I stared at the ground, inching, carefully, taking large steps to diminish my chances of stepping in a poo puddle bomb.  

I focused with Karate Kid-like intensity, as if I were Ralph Macchio balancing on that beam, staring into the sunset over the ocean's tide.  I must overcome!  For a brief moment, I was sure of what Frogger was going through in all his trials.

But alas!  I made it!  Rejoice!  I had reached the goal - the bin - unscathed!

I lifted the left side lid and held it open.  With my right hand, I showered down pumpkin seeds, crushed eggshells, carrot and parsnip shreds, bits of brussel sprouts, everything.  

And then I heard a death scream.

And it was coming out of my mouth.

As the cascading waterfall of veggie scraps fell to the pile and I looked down upon it, to my shock and horror, a ratty rodent leapt miraculously high out of the bin at me (clearly must have been mixed with kangaroo DNA - have you ever seen the leaping power of the rabbit on Monty Python's Holy Grail?  I feared for my very life.), then scampered down the edge of the bin and away to safety, a.k.a. my neighbor's garbage can.


This is what my life felt like at that moment.
I dropped the bin lid like it was hot.  There was no thought of carefully wading across the lawn now - only a 100 yard dash sprint a la Usain Bolt.  Surprisingly, I did not get any poo on my shoes on the way back either, but I am pretty sure that is because I was flying over the backyard.

I leapt into the house, slamming the door behind me, crashing against it and trying to tell myself to calm down lest I cause a heart explosion and have to clean up the walls.  That would totally be worse than poo!  Plus, I'd be dead, so it would also be difficult.

Since people in the house were all absorbed in doing loud things, they did not hear me.  I did, however, worry for quite some time that the police would show up at my door due to a call from the neighbors checking to see if I heard anyone being murdered lately in the area.

Luckily, that did not happen.

I reported the story to my hubby, who said, "Don't you always prepare yourself for that?  I always think that a rat is going to jump out at me!"  SERIOUSLY?!  What?!  So you can imagine the buckets of sympathy I received upon the admission of my predicament.  That would be negative zero, in case you were wondering.  (And I totally just said "negative zero" for all the engineers and mathematicians so that they could have something to gag about.  You're welcome!)

Needless to say, I only go out to the bin in daylight now (those 3 hours a day over here...er, it just feels like it) and have delegated any night trips to my dear loving husband.  And the bin lid is permanently open.  No more surprises, suckas.

This is Ms. Daisy reporting, reminding you to keep your eyes open and your shoes clean!

Peace, love and I hate everything about winter (apparently I needed yet another reason),
Ms. Daisy

2 comments:

  1. This is somewhat exhausting to do. You could still enjoy composting if you have a simple compost bin within your house. Anyway, thanks for sharing.

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  2. Thank you for the link, I checked it out. It seems like it's kind of a holding tank for the indoor compost, right? I don't mind walking out to the bin in the daytime as I can see the poo/land mines, but yes, when it is dark, it's a scary thing. The downside I see for the indoor compost bin is that it doesn't get oxygen so it really can't compost; it looks like it's made of plastic and I think plastic is the devil; and I am a minimalist so I can't bear to have anything of substantive size out on the counter. But I think for people who haven't ever composted, this would be a great way to get your feet wet. Thanks for the idea. Anyone out there who doesn't compost yet, do check that link out - it's a super easy way to start!

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