Spring Cleaning

Ah, our sweet, pure countryside. Peaceful, and quiet...and often a dumping grounds for a bunch of asshats too lazy to find proper disposal for whatever it is they have to throw away. Yard waste, sofas, once an entire truck full of crap—truck and all. Last week, these bags full of paint cans were dumped in the ditch  near our yard, and several more 5-gallon paint buckets tossed over the fence.

I'm not sure who cleans this stuff, up, but the bags in the ditch were removed within a day. The paint buckets inside the fence remain.

In the meantime, I have turned into a bona fide cranky old lady over all of the rest of the garbage that lines our road. I am dadgummitting all of those no-good disrespectful whippersnappers that toss their beer bottles and beer cans and fast food wrappers out the window until the cows come home.

As fun as it was while it lasted, griping never solves anything, so I resorted to Plan B: Pick it all up myself. I shelled out a dollar-seventy-nine for a picker-upper at Harbor Freight so I wouldn't actually have to touch anything gross, and I headed South yesterday afternoon.

I only went about 1/4 mile and back, cleaning up both sides of the road. As I was working, the thought crossed my  mind that cleaning up now was good timing, as the brush in the ditches was mowed down, and there would be no hidden snakes, oh, don't think about snakes, just don't think about snakes.

And yet, as I leaned in to grab a beer can, I stepped back onto the road to find myself tagging right up to a garter snake sunning itself on the side of the road.

 

 (Not my photo, but it looked just like this.)

Did you hear me scream? Because scream is what I did, involuntarily and right from the heart and the gut. I screamed and I jumped and I convulsed and shuddered, and had myself quite a spasmodic little fit out there. I'm sure you heard me. My heart races a little just writing this, and looking  at that photo. Brrrrrrrr


By the time I got back, I was loaded down enough to wish for a wagon, and thankful I hadn't gone further before I turned around. Glass and aluminum gets heavy fast.

Here's the view from the mailbox now:

Clean, clean, clean, clean, clean! I've made the trip down the road only twice since I tidied it up, and the work was well worth the hour or so I spent on it.

Worth the snake too? Honestly, I don't know. I got lucky with a garter snake—we've witnessed a few in the 3- to 4-foot long range slithering across the road, and if I ran into one of those suckers, I think it really would be the end of me.

So, just do me a favor, and just keep your garbage in your truck until you get home, would you?