I'm Retired! Now what?

Although I made sure we had room in our garage for our new Subaru, I discovered that there was little room for anything else.  Why?  Because of all the recyclable stuff that I had been hoarding over the last few months was stacked up to the point where I could have auditioned for the TV reality show Hoarders!  Indeed, one never knows how much cardboard and plastic they use until they start bagging it all up to someday take to the recycle center.  I realize that there is only two of us who live in this house, but for some reason that eludes me, we seem to collect a huge mass of recyclable crap to the point where an entire fleet of semi-trucks might be required to haul the stuff off.  Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I had close to ten trash bags full of stuff to take in.  Our town has a nearby, community recycle center, but it’s only open during the afternoon of three days a week.  And for the last thirty something years only ONE of these days fell within my days off.  But now, glory be!  I’m retired, and that means I can haul all my cardboard and plastic trash off ANY TIME I WANT TO!  As long as it falls on one of those three afternoons anyway.

For no other reason, I needed to haul the stuff off because some mangy rat had gotten into my garage and had started chowing down on my plastic bags.  I discovered this when I picked up one of my bags of plastic bottles and half of them fell out through the bag’s chewed up bottom.  My only question was, “Why?”  Why was this vile, little creature interested in plastic?  We wash everything before tossing it.  Half the time our dishwasher is packed full of a collection of empty plastic bottles from barbeque sauce, tartar sauce, mayonnaise, ranch and every other type of condiment known to the civilized world!  So the plastic shouldn’t have any smell!  I even rinse out the soft drink bottles.  So why?  Why? Why?  There’s nothing that ticks me off more than an illogical thinking rodent!

 We also had a bunch of stuff in the garage that we were going to haul off to the local Salvation Army, but the little beast was chowing down on them as well.  Since the youngest grandkid had now moved out of the “car seat” stage of his life we had a perfectly good car seat we were going to donate, but apparently the mangy varmint decided that the seat was his (or hers), and destroyed the thing before we had a chance to do something worth wild with it.  Okay, I don’t care what a lover of nature and animals I might be.  This meant war!

“That devilish fiend will eat my new car!” Margaret screeched out in terror.  I had to share her fear because rats will crawl into a car.  Around twenty years ago I was the proud owner of a lovely Nissan Maxima, and one day I popped the hood to check the engine and was instantly greeted by a large rat who was posed right there in the engine of my prized Japanese sedan.  He (or she) didn’t seem the least bit frighten by my greeting.  It merely looked up to me as if to say, “Hey dude!  What’s up?  Geez, when’s the last time you changed these sparkplugs?  The battery is a mess as well!”  This pesky, little critter had actually made a small nest right next to my oil dipstick.  For a while there I actually thought it was kind of nice to have someone to talk to, and there were times when I nearly broke out into the old Michael Jackson song Ben, which is about a boy and a rat.  However, that was then, and this is now!  The present rat had to go! 

Indeed, there was no way I was letting this rat wreak havoc in my garage.  As I launched into rodent combat mode I laid out a bunch of traps.  This may sound a bit violent to the more pacifistic animal lover, but rats and mice can destroy a house.  Many houses have been burned to the ground due to the actions of a wayward rodent!  They can chew through wires and start electrical fires, or even more devastating, jack with my new Subaru before I had a chance to make the second payment!  Once again, the rat had to go, by any means necessary!

With the courageous diligence of a rugged mountain men of the 1800’s, I checked my traps the next morning and nearly let out a mighty cheer of manly pride when I discovered that I had caught the little monster!  There would be no singing of the song Ben for this vile creature!   So before I loaded up all my recyclable stuff to haul off, I had to decide what to do with the deceased rodent.  I’m sure there is some proper disposal practice for dead rats and mice, but there was no way I was sticking the lifeless carcass into my trash because trash pickup day was nearly a week away, and a dead rat can get pretty smelly over the course of a week!  Instead, I did what any guy who lives in the country does.  I merely tossed him out into my front yard.

I’m not sure what happened to the chubby, little guy (or girl), but when I looked for him (or her) later that afternoon it was gone!  I’ve always heard that turkey buzzards won’t eat anything unless it’s been dead for at least four days, but perhaps they made an exception in this case.  Whatever took an interest in the furry, little stiff had my gratitude.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s all part of the recycle process.  Regardless if it’s paper, metal, plastic, or dead rodents, we all have to do our part.