Roadkill Stew

So, this morning was special.  The entire house was woken up at 4am by an alarm that Brendan set for (presumably nefarious) purposes yet to be determined.  Nate went back to sleep, but I'm pretty sure he was the only one.  After I finally accepted that there was no time machine available to give us back all of the sleep that we lost, and that getting ready for work was both necessary and inevitable, I got up and got dressed.

I woke Nate up shortly before I left because last night he asked to get up early because he had a Very Important episode of Chima to watch before school.  As I puttered around the kitchen making my breakfast we chatted about the little family of bunnies who have taken up residence in our backyard.  He told me all about the mama and the daddy and the littlest one who likes to hang out by the pine tree which doubles as his clubhouse.  He laughed when I told him that every time I let the dogs out I open the door first and yell and waive my arms to give the bunnies fair notice to vacate the premises.

As I was pouring myself a drink, I heard the familiar rumble of the garbage truck rolling through the neighborhood and realized that nobody had taken the garbage out.  I panicked and raced out to the front porch, where I saw it head the opposite direction from our house.  Knowing that that would buy me some time, I opened the garage door and frantically started dragging bags to the curb.  As soon as I took the first load down, I saw a small, still lump with a snowy white tail laying in the roadway, right in front of our yard.  I instantly knew that this would work out in one of two ways, neither of them good.  Either the dogs would find its tiny little corpse so irresistible that they would barge through the electric fence and claim their prize, or it would be in Nate's direct line of sight as he left for school in the morning and he would be devastated.  So I grabbed the pooper scooper and used it to pick up its stiff* little lifeless body and carry it over to the trash can.  Nearly there, the spring in the scoop designed for picking up dog waste and not Peter Rabbit gave out, and it fell to the road with a dull thud.  I took a deep breath, picked it back up, and dropped it in the can.

I left the lid open because I intended to get another bag to put on top so that it would be hidden from view after I went in the house and washed my hands.  But then I forgot about that, and drove off to work with the trash can standing open, bunny in full view. Sorry garbage guys. I guess that's payback for the time that you wouldn't take our trash because it was in the grass next to the driveway instead of on the pavement.


*So, SO grateful it was stiff.  Had visions of it being not quite dead and then having to figure out what exactly to do about that.