Theater of the Soul

I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve got a ton of wildlife encounter stories. When you live in the middle of Nowhere, USA the local fauna becomes a part of your every day life. I wasn’t born here. I was born and raised as a city girl until I turned 15 and moved to the country when my mother was quite sure that I was headed down the fast track to juvenile delinquency. It was quite possibly the best thing she ever did for me, but there have been times that I’ve wondered exactly what the fuck I’m dealing with here. Usually the worst encounters I’ve had with wildlife were due directly to the stupidity of some of my human counterparts.

The winter of 1997-1998 was a bad one for me. In November, the apartment building I was living in burned down to the ground, taking everything I owned with it. I was getting burned out with my job at the kiddie jail that I was working at and The Ex and I were having ‘issues’. I had moved into his apartment after the fire and couldn’t wait to get out of there. I was struggling with some depression and, by the time March rolled around, I was needing my own space.

I found a cute little apartment in the next town that had a nice deck leading out to a big backyard and I pounced on it. I had been living there for a few weeks, when the neighbors from hell moved in. Mind you, I’m not an elitist, but these people were the epitome of hillbillyness. When they moved in, suddenly the front yard was full of junk cars, beer cans, broken yard machinery, a huge metal container with a grill top on it…I swear to God that every hillbilly cliche’ was sitting there. I minded my business because, really, what can you do? I was too busy trying to piece my household back together to really pay too much attention to something I had no control over.

The last straw came about 2 months after they had moved in. I was working 2nd shift at the time and by the time I got home, I was just exhausted every night. I wasn’t well and my patience was hanging by a thread. I fell into bed one night, only to be woken up at 2am by flashing blue lights. I looked out my window and saw a Fish and Game truck backing down my driveway with a flatbed attached. On the flatbed was a huge, dead moose. Apparently, my neighbors had been following a car that hit the moose that evening. Around here, if you hit and kill an animal like a moose, deer or bear, the Fish and Game guys will truck it over to your house if you want the meat. This is pretty common, so I didn’t really think much about it and went back to sleep.

The next morning, I got up, made a cup of coffee and went out on the deck to enjoy my daily dose of peace and quiet. The backyard was full of various moose parts. The four legs were stacked up like firewood on one side of the yard. The head was in between the two decks. Various entrails were scattered around the middle of the yard where there was a huge bloodstain.

Wonderful way to start the day, let me tell ya.

I didn’t get pissed because I assumed that they had been up late into the night butchering the moose and getting it into the freezer. I also, mistakenly, assumed that they would take care of the ‘leftovers’ later that day. The next morning I got up and everything was still out there. It was springtime and it was pretty warm during the daytime. The third day…same thing. Around Day 6, flies were congregating.

I left a note for them one day before I left for work, asking them to please take care of the mess. Nothing. Two days after that, I called the landlord. He didn’t get any results either. Finally, I freaked the fuck out.

I stormed over there at 7am on a Sunday morning and pounded until they opened the door. After much swearing, I finally got it through their heads that they were either going to take care of the mess, or I’d be creating a graveyard of my own, starting with them. I left for work that afternoon and when I got up the next morning, everything was gone.

I was happy…at least the backyard was cleaned up and after the rain had cleaned things away, my son and I could enjoy it. That afternoon was my day off, which meant housecleaning. I needed to take out the garbage, so I bagged it up. I walked over to the dumpster, flipped back the cover…and discovered that my neighbors in all of their glorious hillbillyness, had propped up the moose head (ala The Godfather horse head) in the dumpster with a CIGAR hanging out it’s mouth, beer cans decorating it’s antlers and flies buzzing all around.

I stood there for a minute. My neighbors were at work and I half considered taking that moose head out of the dumpster and putting it in one of the junk cars they had brought with them.

Instead, I went back inside, opened up the newspaper and looked for a new apartment. I moved out two weeks later…but not before I left 4 packages of hamburger discreetly hidden under the seats of their cars.