Dearly Departed

Okay, first off, this post is going to refer to the fact that cats, left to their own devices, will hunt and kill small animals.  If you are squicked out or angered by that, feel free to skip this.



Enough of the snow has melted so that I was able to deer-net some of the front gardens last night.  Every year I put it off, and every year, by the time I get around to it, perennials have already come up and been chowed down by the deer.  This year, I vowed, would be different.  This year I was going to net the gardens before stuff started coming up.

First I had to wait for the foot of snow that's been on the damn ground since JANUARY to thaw.  There's still a few inches left, but most of the gardens were clear, and we're supposed to get MORE snow tonight, f*ckyouverymuch, so I had to act fast.

And you know ... I had forgotten about the corpses.

Whenever the cats bring in a mouse or a mole or a bird or whatever that doesn't ... make it, I pick up the remains, take it and/or them out back and down along the brush line, tell it and/or them to Rest in Pieces, and give it and/or them a little fling into the brush.  Not as festive as it sounds, really, but somehow I can't quite bring myself to put bodies in the trash with the coffee grounds and the pizza crusts, and it would be impossible to dig a damn grave if I wanted to, this time of year.  Yeah, I could store the bodies in the shed until the weather warms up, but ... no.  Not even I'm that damn crazy.  I don't want to make the local news broadcast.  "Woman found with nine million corpses in shed" ... NO.  And then, come spring, I'd need a frickin' excavator to dig a big enough hole, so no.

But!  Sometimes, when it's brutal cold and dark out and there is no way in HELL I'm going out in my PJs with a flashlight to the brush line, I just ... open up the front door and do the fling.  Into the front gardens.

And by the time I actually start working in the gardens come spring, everything has decomposed and Circle of Life and Elton John and blahblahblah, so we're all good.

Except ... for this year.  When I decided to up my game and actually net off the gardens before anything could start gnawing on the daylilies.  So I was giving the gardens scrutiny they usually would not get for another month or so.  Add to that an exceptionally cold winter, which is not conducive to decomposition, and ... well ...

That little shoot of red plant I excitedly saw poking up?  Was, in fact, a cardinal's beak.  Attached to its head.  But that was it.  Just ... the head.

A few feet away?  A mouse.  Or, you know, what remains of a mouse after the spirit has departed but the flesh has been left behind.  Weathering, so to speak.

You guys, my front gardens are like something out of a Stephen King novel right now.  I laid out the netting as fast as possible and beat feet out of there.  Thank goodness for that fresh layer of snow we're about to get tonight.  Funny how that goes, isn't it?  When I first heard the weather forecast, I was all, "Oh no, NOOOOOOO, no more snoooooowwwwwww,"  and then I made some, um, discoveries, and I'm all, like, "Please snow please snow please snow."

I need something to cover up the remains, after all.