Friday, September 20, 2013

Bring Out Your Dead

Today is a weekly trash pickup day.  I had an unusual amount of dead bodies in the trash can.

One was a mouse.  As I wrote years ago, live traps don't work and the mice refuse to wear waist-coats and sing or dance.  So we set snap traps, and once a trap is used I carry the trap with its snapped contents to the trash can.
 
Then there was the Squirrel From Tinaldos.  I was cleaning up by the firewood pile, above which we store some long Trex boards, and found a moderately decomposed squirrel who had died after catching a rear foot between two boards.  Somehow decomposing had removed all its curves: it had become a furry, grizzly L-shape that looked more like an unusually geometric bird's nest than a former animal.  Into the trash.

Most of the bodies were big spiders.  That is part of September where I live: all the spiders who have been unusually successful eating and growing while spending the summer in the garage and heating vents notice the colder weather and decide to come inside to the laundry room and find a place to hide until winter is over.


I normally do not mind spiders in the home if they want to hide in a corner and wait for an insect meal to come to them, but when they are of sufficient size to prompt me to think to myself, "For a smooth-legged spider you sure have feathery pedipalps," then it is time to commence squishing.

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