Shell Henge and Squirrel Heads

I am typing this with bandages on two fingers and a thumb, and my hands ache from pulling weeds, but I am writing it nonetheless. This is because I am extremely something (note to self - find adjective and fill this in before posting).

My plan for today was merely to mow the lawn and do some general cleanup around the house. We're having a few friends over tomorrow to have a traditional Independence Day burger-and-bratwurst cookout and then we're going to go watch fireworks, if the weather cooperates. Much relaxation requires much preparation.

So, I started out by mowing the front lawn. This, by the way, has become more of a chore lately. All that aerating with my dad's golf shoes and massive doses of weed-n-seed have had an effect; we no longer have a dead, dead, lawn. We now have a thicket of ruthless, wiry, grass that is attempting to attack and digest large sections of concrete sidewalk now.

My neighbor was impressed - he watched me murder the lawn to begin with. He asked me what variety of grass I had been putting down, since he said he hadn't see that many different shades of green before.

Varieties?

I just bought bag after bag of stuff and poured it on the lawn. I looked at some of the old half-empty bags. Zoysia, centipede, carpetgrass, and modified bluegrass, is what. No wonder it is eating my sidewalk, I've bred the grass equivalent of a Superfund cleanup site. Well, then.

So, as it turned out, just mowing was having little effect. I determined that I was going to have to edge. Edging is slow, painful work. Well, it is slow and painful if you do not have a gasoline-powered edging thing. Which frankly, I should have. But even I, a man who can spend money faster than a third-world dictator with a new mistress and some offshore oil derricks cannot justify a gasoline-powered edger that I'd use about once per year for around three hundred dollars.

And I have a weed-whacker, but it is a wimp, so I don't use it. Weed insulter, is more like it. Weed slapper. It lightly smacks them around, and they give it their weedy equivalent of their middle fingers. Then, it whimpers at me and jams. Piece of crap, is what.

See, when I moved to North Carolina from lawnless New Mexico, I didn't know jack about weed whackers. Remembered when they came out when I was a boy, but my dad thought using a pair of scissors on my hands and knees built more character. I've got character, pop. Thanks.

So I bought a Black-and-Decker weed whacker, battery-operated, for about fifty dollars. Figured that since I have a small lawn, I don't need any more than that. This was before I found out what a pile of crap the Black-and-Decker company has become - they're really just a name now, their products are overseas-made crap, and you can't reach a real human being on the phone to talk to them about it. Just my opinion, folks.

Anyway.

That leaves me with the tried-and-true ninja star on a stick method of edging the yard. Which I proceeded to do. And it is in the mid eighties, with very high humidity. I feel like a steamy half-cooked bratwurst. Blisters all over my hands - because of course I would not wear gloves. Hence, the liberal slathering of Neosporin and bandages about now, complete with aches and pains in places I'd rather not discuss.

But my day did not begin in such a fine way. I only wish that it had.

We keep Milo and Molly, our Dogs of the Apocalypse, in the kitchen at night. We've got a WalMart force-field to block the door shut, and they've got food and water and their crates inside. We keep them well-stocked with chewy leather things to try to satisfy their need to chew on ever thang, but it doesn't do much good. They still chew on the wooden cabinets, the linoleum floor, anything they can jump up and pull down off the counters, and even the aluminum front of our dishwasher. I only wish I was joking, they've done thousands of dollars of damage. And we can't fix it, they'll just do it again. They're about eight months old now. We only hope that they outgrow it. They're mutts, so we don't have a 'breed' type to go by. We don't even know what went into them, they're pound puppies.

They don't make toxic dumps in the kitchen anymore, though. They've become able to hold it until we get up and let them out in the morning. They wake us up with ferocious barking or whining at about 5 a.m. every morning. We take turns getting up, turning off the alarm, stumbling downstairs, and blearily unlocking the back door. Then whichever of us got up makes coffee and we turn on WRAL-TV and sit zombie-like until the Coffee Goodness has been achieved.

On Friday, Mrs. Wiggy was the one who got up. She told me after I came tumbling downstairs later that the dogs had pooped on the kitchen floor and she had to clean it up. That's not usual - they got over that some time ago. Bummer.

So this morning, it was my turn to rise and fail to shine.

Ah. More poop. Lovely.

Oh, and more.

Something nasty in one corner of the kitchen. A big steaming pile of something nasty.

I let the dogs out so that I could get out the mop and begin sterilization procedures. It was still dark out, so I was glad that they didn't immediately begin their usual hysterical barking at the local smart-ass squirrel.

We've got a tree in the backyard, and there is a small grey squirrel that lives in it. The squirrel has never been a problem for Mrs. Wiggy or myself, although it steals bird food that Mrs. Wiggy puts out for the birds.

But since we got the puppies, we've discovered that the squirrel has a cruel streak. It likes to torture the dogs by running just far enough up the trunk of the tree that it can't be reached. Then it turns and chitters at the dogs, cursing them and whipping them up into a frenzy. And like the fuzzy, happy, morons that they are, they cooperate. Bark, bark, bark. I'm so ashamed.

Mrs. Wiggy knows that I can't stand the dogs barking early in the morning or late at night. I worry that our neighbors are going to toss some poisoned meat over the fence one night, is what. Well, not our neighbors, prolly. They're nice people. But still, no one should have to put up with barky dogs when they're trying to sleep.

Well, no barking this morning. Good enough, since I have to deal with this steaming pile of whatever it is.

And then I find out what it is. Oh, dear Lord. Squirrel head, partially digested. Oh, hell no! Yep. There's the ears and it's oh-my-god it is looking at me!

I ran to the kitchen sink and commenced to throwing up, is what. I've got nothing in my stomach since last night, and I'm shooting ectoplasm at high velocity out of all the holes in my face. Must have been quite the sight.

Well, Mister Squirrel, it seems you must have fallen from Grace, is what. Was it a misstep on your part, or did you misjudge how high those pups could jump? Which one got you, was it Milo or Molly? Seems like you got your revenge, though - whichever one of them ate your head couldn't finish the job. I guess that explains why the dogs aren't out there making a hell of a racket this morning.

I finally got my insides more of less in order, and commenced to cleaning up. I ended up having to strip down and scrub the kitchen from top to bottom with boiling hot water and Mister Clean, which it needed anyway. I just had no plans to do it on my three-day Independence Day break, is all. At five in the blessed a.m. Before having coffee. After having tossed my cookies in a most undignified way. Why does this crap always happen to me? I'm gonna have nightmares about that squirrel-head for a long, long, time. Yikes.

And that brings me back to the lawn-mowing adventure. After I mowed and edged the front yard, I got ambitious and decided to do the back yard. That's foreign territory to me - we ceded it to the Doggie Nation some time back, and they've redecorated. They are slowly eating the garage, and they've dug some holes more or less down to the red-hot center of the earth.

Now, here's the interesting part. The dogs keep pulling these bright white, fossilized sea shells out of the holes they dig. Frankly, I think they're fossilized, Mrs. Wiggy thinks they are encased in some sort of concrete - that's what they look and feel like, anyway. If they were being dug out of a busted-up concrete driveway or something, I'd agree. But this house is the first to stand on this lot - it was built in 1923, and the lot was plotted in 1903. Before that, there was nothing. There is no basement - they're pointless in the wet clay that passes for soil in this part of North Carolina. People didn't pour foundations back then - the house is built on short fat brick walls and there is a two-foot crawlspace under the house.

So anyway, we have no idea where these bright white sea shells come from.

And there's more.

When I went out into the back yard to mow it, I discovered that the dogs have been arranging the shells in an arrangement of some sort around the tree (the one that formerly had a snotty squirrel in it). There appeared to be some sort of purpose to it all.

These dogs are not canine rocket scientists. Oh, Molly is pretty clever and seems to have an innate grasp of geometry and some rudimentary psychology, but I've beaten her at checkers, and when I tried to get her to play chess, she just ate the white bishop and ran off with the black queen, so she's not that smart. I let her balance our checkbook, but I'd never trust her with our investments, ya know?

And they're not neat. They don't pick up after themselves, and they certainly don't have any concept that some things should go here and some things should go there. But here all these shells were, all nicely concentrated in one area, around the base of this one tree. And more and more had been appearing over time - so clearly, as they dug up more of them, they were putting them all together in one place. I asked Mrs. Wiggy to be sure - she had not touched the nasty sea shells.

So what's the deal with these shells? Was this some sort of prayer to ancient canine gods, asking for the deliverance of the naughty squirrel? A trade of some sort? Could this be some kind of Shell Henge? Whatever it was, it appeared to have worked. The squirrel had been obtained and disassembled. I wondered if the sea shell henge would not also now be disassembled, having served it's nefarious purpose. It was enough to put a shiver down my spine.

Well, actually, it wasn't that thought which put a shiver down my spine. It was the lawn mower shuddering to a stop as I mowed the back yard. It made some kind of sickening noise, like someone ran over an armadillo with their car, and then the motor froze up.

Silence filled the air, and I thought for a second that I could smell something bad.

Ah, yes. The rest of the squirrel.

I'll bet you've never seen a grown man standing on the side of his house, hosing off the underside of his lawn mower, while periodically running over to the hedges and doing the Big Spit. I'll spare you the photo.

Happy Independence Day. Happy Birthday, America. Sorry, squirrel. I said I wanted to 'get back to nature', but not like this, oh God, not like this.

Quid Me Vexabum,

Wiggy