The Squirrel

My original intention for this blog was to get my memories out so when my mind starts to go (which should be any day now), I would have a place to go back and relive my life with James. I was also hoping that as time goes on, this will be a place for me to see that I am moving forward with grieving and with my life.

I am not sure what made me think of this yesterday or why it made me laugh because it is actually kind of morbid. But, the good news is I am getting to a point where the memories of James are not so painful.

We moved into our first house in July 2001. It was a very popular floor plan for this area; we had already seen a couple others just like it when we saw it for the first time. We rushed through the house. We had already discussed the pros and cons of that layout so there was no need to take our time looking at it. And then we saw the backyard. The park-like setting, complete with a pond, is what sold us. Of course, we would come to hate having a pond in a yard with 8 evergreen trees, but we were naive first time home buyers. Mostly James hated it since cleaning the pond was a boy chore.

By the time we moved in, the house had been empty for a couple of weeks. We took another week to unpack the basics. Meanwhile, the yard suffered. So, we set about to fix it before it got any worse. I came home from work one day and James had the sprinkler going in the back yard. I asked how long it had been on and if he wanted me to go move it. It needed to be moved so I went out to do that and noticed a plant I didn't remember. I thought maybe I just hadn't noticed it before, but I was pretty certain it hadn't been there before. So, I turned off the water, went and looked at it and then went back in the house and asked James if he was aware he was watering a dead squirrel.

This brought up our first dilemma as homeowners: are squirrels garbage or yard debris? An argument could be made for both and we really had no idea what to do with it. So, James scooped it up into a garbage bag, and when it got dark, we drove over and threw it in the dumpster at the apartment complex we had just moved out of. We had issues with them.

That was the only time we had to deal with this. There was one day when we had to drive slalom-style down the street to avoid hitting a bunch of them, but they were the city's problem to dispose of. I have been told, however, that they are considered garbage which is good to know.