Delicious Minutiae

“E wants Kielbasa for dinner,” I told Jeff over the phone last Thursday.  “Can you grill them tonight?”

Seems reasonable, one might think.  I’m just a silly woman, so no way could I fire up the grill and cook that meat in the outdoors by myself.

“Those bitches don’t know jack about grilling meat.”

Turns out something died under our deck, however, which Jeff discovered that morning before work.  He went out back to investigate two boards that had popped up, warped to a crazy degree, and there in the hole was a deceased something.

So, I ran with the phone to the other room, to look out the sliding glass door, while he informed me of his plan to get some gloves on the way home from work and remove the deceased something’s remains.

“It’s pretty big, but I can’t tell what it is,” he said.

“There are a lot of flies,” I told him.  “And crawly things around the deck.”

“Game over. I win!!”

Well, forget it.  Flies and crawly things?  He changed his mind.  No kielbasa for E.

Bear Grylls might have enjoyed a fine dining experience, but we weren’t even willing to go close enough to remove it.

Good thing it wasn’t a zebra under our deck. Or was it?

Thursday turned into Friday turned into Saturday.  Hot days, for sure.  Saturday was somewhat sweltery, even.  The kind of day that might find an egg frying on a sidewalk…or maybe a coyote slow-roasting under a deck.

Satan is so silly. He’s gotta know I don’t *do* phone.

We weighed our options.  By “we”, I mean Jeff is 100% in charge of all dead bodies on our property.  I’m happy to micromanage all sorts of projects, but Jeff is our circle of life correspondent.

Turns out it costs a lot more to have someone come out on the weekend.  Oh, holiday weekend you say?  Double it.

“So you see, it’s like this… We can come today and it’ll cost you $eleventy-hundred million, or we’ll come by in three days and remove the liquefied, putrified remains for $6.”

No can do!  We’ll let it rot for a couple more days and accept the less expensive removal, thank you.

So, Saturday turned into Sunday.  The neighbors erected a tent in their backyard.  The bouncy castle inflated to epic proportions–not the cheap little one, but the “impress your guests” sized one.  They had a slip and slide.  They had balloons on the mailbox.

They had a dead body in the neighbors yard.  The downwind neighbor.

Vomit cleans up quick and easy with paper towels.

While Jeff was out running an errand (Fine, he was grocery shopping!  Happy now?  He was getting our groceries.  So what?  I’m educating his children!  I *do* do something useful. Not that I’m prickly about it.), someone knocked on our door.  I knew it was the neighbor, probably wanting to alert us there was going to be a party, or that there’d be a lot of cars, or inquiring about the smell of rotting flesh wafting from our backyard…  Neighborly stuff.

Then again, it might have been an alligator.

So, we ignored the doorbell.  Knocking?  I don’t hear anyone knocking.

“Are we going to answer?” one of the kids asked.

Umm, no.

“WTF is the smell coming from your yard???”

I also crept into the sunroom and sssllllloooowwwwllllllllyyyy pulled the blinds down.  Eased them down so no one would notice their descent.

I guess their party was fine.  I didn’t hear anyone vomiting in the bushes, so I’m sure it was okay.

Monday was Memorial Day.  We marched in a parade with our Scout Pack.  We did lunch at Chili’s for my friend’s son’s birthday (who I later flipped off by accident…he’s 9 now, so he can take it).  Then we got home and Jeff said he’d be outside if I was looking for him.  He was gone a long time!  I checked after awhile and he had done the body removal.  Why he waited for the 5th day is beyond me, but he did it.

I wish I had taken pictures of Jeff doing the removal, but he didn’t tell me that’s what he was doing. Maybe next time. Until then, enjoy this guy.

He still doesn’t know what it was.  I’m kind of pissed.  I wanted to take a picture of the boards, but I waited five days too.  Jeff said the ground was still moving long after the host was triple bagged.  Is it wrong that I still wanted to see it?  The smell held me back though.

“Trust me, you don’t want to see it.” Jeff assured me.

Jeff replaced the deck boards with new ones and life returns to normal.  This is just another footnote in Beeler history…  Well, the new and improved history, now with rotting animal corpses!

Imagine my surprise when I googled “rotten animal corpses” hoping for something funny…and got this! We love Bear Grylls something fierce in this house. ❤

My apologies to the neighbors.  I hope you had a nice time at your party.