Time can get away from us. This year is little more than two months from being over already, but my story today is somewhat more recent. It is also a bit icky, so be forewarned.
Sometime between the melting of the ice which held us prisoner all winter and the first chill of autumn, I found a dead bird on my patio. There was no sign of predatory violence, so I assumed it was just the poor creature’s time, wrapped it quickly in paper towels and deposited it into my lidded trashcan. The one I bought but have not needed now that my actual trash weeks are fairly minimal. Anyway, I have a brick on top of the lid to prevent any critters from trying to get inside, not that anything would attract them when it’s empty.
Fill it with anything, though, and you’re inviting the denizens of the outdoors to investigate.
A few weeks ago, I took out some recycling and found that a squirrel was apparently chewing the plastic lip of the lid away to get into the trashcan. Nearly half of the sheath of plastic on the side had been eaten away. I had forgotten all about the dead bird, and the can had gained a discarded hose and provided temporary storage to a cylindrical bird feeder designed for a pillar of feed, with a post in the middle.
I’m a Scorpio, so forgetfulness is not a big thing for that sign in astrology. At least we never forget a slight, but we can, apparently, forget that dead bodies don’t exist in a void. They decompose, and even though there was no odor coming from the can, I probably should have tended to the matter earlier than I did. As it was, I didn’t get time to tackle the issue until the weekend, so in the meantime I put two large paving stones on the can, and the squirrel with the need to gnaw appeared to have given up.
I finally opened up the can and investigated. To my horror, there was no longer a bird body or trace of paper towel to be found. The hose, which was one of those expandable types I will never buy again (they burst easily in my experience) was still sitting in the bottom, but it was the cylinder feeder that was a source of concern.
When I pulled it out of the can, where it had been stored for several weeks or more, it was covered with wriggly things, and inside surrounding the post, where a cylinder of birdseed would be, was a large cocoon-like structure reminiscent of the “Alien” franchise.
I’m not one to freak out over such things. I don’t have my nails done, so they’re short and suited to typing and a variety of manual labor tasks, and I have no fear of xenomorphs. When I looked at the evidence before me, however, I could only think of one thing: maggots.
Nature’s tiny cleaning crew seemed to have taken over what I had neglected.
At first, I chucked the whole feeder into a trash bag, but as the hours wore on my inner late-era Boomer personality started making me feel guilty for wasting a perfectly good–and somewhat costly–metal bird feeder. I did what anybody does these days, and I asked an AI assistant for advice. Good news. The feeder was salvageable.
The next day, I went to the dollar store and approached the checkout looking like the typical serial criminal, toting a large bottle of bleach and a pair of disposable gloves. I went home, opened up the feeder and removed the nest of horrors, soaking the entire structure in a bucket of bleach and water before hosing it down, setting it to dry and hitting the shower to scrub myself clean of anything even remotely outdoorsy.
In “Lord of the Rings,” the Uruk-hai had feasted on maggot-ridden bread for days while traveling to battle. They can have it. At least the birds will have a clean feeder, the trash with my glove and bleach combo was hauled away, and nothing has bothered my trashcan lid since. Fortunately, I did not touch a single maggot.
The whole incident probably has not cured me of procrastination, but it has taught me that I can still handle unpleasant adult tasks, save money not buying items to replace perfectly good ones that just need a rinsing off, and that nothing keeps squirrels away.
Except maybe two heavy paving stones still sitting atop the trashcan. Which will remain empty.
