Peppy La Pew

Over a month ago I did a very bad thing... but really it's not my fault and this is why.

Our town will only collect three bags of garbage once per week.  That's fine.  Between recycling and our composter we don't produce more than one bag per week.

However in the Spring when all the snow melts I get this itch to clean up and clean out.  (From what I hear on CBC radio this is normal for most Canadians, hence the massive amounts of yard sales in the the Spring.)  During the month of April we produced more than three bags of garbage per week.  (Can you say purge?)

I went to college and I can count to three.  I assumed (I know that's never good) that I could put four bags of garbage in our garbage box in the alley have three picked up one week and the week later have the fourth picked up with the new two.  It made sense to me 4-3=1  1+2=3

So this is what really happened.    

Three bags of garbage were removed.  The fourth was left with a red tag stating it was too much and I should consider recycling.  This is fine and I added my two new bags of garbage.  The next week only the two new bags of garbage were removed.  Then we had a snow storm and I continued to purge.  (You have to remember I also go a bit crazy in the Spring, don't try talking any sense to me.)

Anyway I will make a long story short.  I accumulated a total of three red tagged bags.  So I left those lonely bags out with their tags on.  Only THREE of them and waited one week for them to be collected.  No such luck then I had a back log of garbage from the previous week.  It was a mess!  

I finally figured it out, they wouldn't take the garbage if they saw a red tag on it regardless of how many bags were in the bin.  So I pulled out all the garbage, pulled off the red tags and left only three garbage bags in the bin.  What to do with the other bags of rotting garbage?  I did only thing I could think of... leave them in the backyard.  I know stupid but it was all my Spring fevered brain could think of as a solution.  

Later I was in the backyard and noticed that the bags had been torn open by some sort of animal.  "Cat" I thought immediately.  I had seen one in the backyard a week ago and set a trap for that little bugger with no luck.

Then a few weeks ago right before we headed to San Francisco my neighbour told me he saw a skunk in his backyard and it had ran under the fence to our yard.  Ed and I thought that we had smelled a skunk around.

Then things got really bad.  Our backyard started to smell like a "grow-op" as someone put it.  We saw signs of the skunk digging under our fence and Ed saw it come out from under our shed while he was out there with the kids.  Eeeek!

This was war!  We had to get rid of the skunk before we left, and he moved the rest of his family in.  I called an animal removal guy and he was going to charge me something like $250 to get rid of the skunk.  Ed said no way we went to work.

We went to the dollar store and loaded up with LED lights and cheap perfume.  At dusk we were lucky enough Mom and Dad came to watch the kids while Ed I went outside.  We were geared in skunk clothing and headlamps.  Ed and I were both scared to look under the shed for the skunk.  Ed was armed with an open umbrella and I had my back turned while we shoved LED lights under the shed.  I poured cheap perfume everywhere possible to cover the skunk's scent.

We left a day or two later and thus far we have seen just a trace of a skunk.  It appears we ruined his  home and he is not coming back.

It was a time we won't soon forget, and I learned my lesson about garbage pick-up.