The Dirty Deed is Almost Done

I am sweating profusely, my hair is drenched and I feel almost as bad as I did the first night I had the flu, but the corpse is up at the top of the hill wrapped in four garbage bags in a metal garbage container. He stinks despite being enclosed in all that plastic, so I will have to move him by car to a place far removed from my dogs.

I have been working up the energy and courage to attack this problem for days, and planning my strategy.

When I finally began the actual removal, I discovered that he was not simply lying on the hard packed earth; he was entrenched in clay and held down by rocks as well as wedged against a pillar of cement blocks cemented together. Impossible to move or even tilt the tower, so I had to pry him out with the shovel.

... First a paw ... raccoons have the most beautiful paws.

I thought of Rocky, the raccoon who used to come when called; the one who took my steak-perfumed hand in his and bit down thinking it was a second piece of steak. I had to have the series of rabies shots.

I thought of the very large raccoon who stole a huge bag of doughnuts that belonged to Gus, and faced him down when Gus tried to retrieve his property.

I also thought of the days when there was a bounty on raccoons and my oldest daughter would go out with my scissors and remove the paws from roadkill in order to get $5. I'd have paid her a good deal more than $5 to get rid of this one.

The main body came loose next. Did you know that raccoon arms and legs look like hardened leather when they are dead?

I placed it on the plastic sheeting in the box and tied it into a bundle. I put the bundle into an old pail and placed a green garbage double bag over the pail and tilted the bundle into the bags and secured them.

Then I returned to the bits and pieces ... tail and hair ... and put them into another garbage bag.

Then came the task of getting it up the 22 steps to the house and the 39 steps to the parking lot where the garbage tins are. He weighed as much as a bag of sand and salt. Heavy. It took me a long time to make the whole two-trip journey with the two bags and the old pail.

By the time I got all of him into the garbage pail, I was exhausted. Being weak from the flu didn't help but neither did exerting myself while attempting not to breathe. That hill from the lake is an aerobic exercise without carrying a forty pound dead weight. And aerobic exercise is based on the concept of breathing while exerting yourself.

I am now going down to pour javex on the spot and on my shovel. I hope it kills the remaining germs and smell down there.

The condition of the shovel reminded me of one of the lines from a childhood ditty.

Does anyone else know the song we used to sing when there was a funeral party passing, or is only me because I lived for a couple of years next door to a funeral home. It went like this:

Did you ever think when the hearse went by
That you might be the next to die?

They lower you down about fifty feet
And all goes well for about a week,

And then your coffin begins to leak.

The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out.
The worms play peek-a-boo on your snout.

Your stomach turns a slimy green
And your pus pours out like whipping cream.

Did you ever think when the hearse goes by
That you might be the next to die?

This whole exercise made me think of this, but I am also stalling. I would just as soon not return to the scene where I performed the dirty deed.