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Taking Out the Compost

Fri, 9 Sep 2016, 08:45 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

The compost pail was chuggin’ full. There were a day’s worth of coffee grounds from work in a Folger’s can on the counter. And there was a bowl of vegetable scraps from the tasty treat Trudy was preparing. Time for a compost run before it got dark.

This is the contract we have, the fair and industrious Trudy and I: she makes tasty treats, and I deal with the compost. (Who’s got the better deal?) So with evening setting in, I set out with my arms full. Trudy handed me the bowl of scraps with a twinkle in her eye and then quickly pulled the patio door shut.

It was dusk — that time that isn’t day and isn’t night. The time when things disappear from plain view before your eyes. The time when screech owls screech and scurrying things skitter around in the black shadows. The time of rummy-gumpshins and nick-tal-roos and wild augerhandles. (You know the kind of dusk I’m talking about?)

I walked thru the gate into that skinny slice of yard that we call our “Back 40”. I had to tilt my head to avoid the Common Hackberry coming up behind the fence. (I gotta cut that thing down this weekend.) But it’s leaves rubbed my neck, and I could feel my skin trying to decide whether to complain or not.

An owl soundlessly swooped before me and glided in an arc around the yard and into the alley behind us. I made a motion to set my load of pail and can and bowl of scraps down.

But I stopped short. Something wasn’t quite right. I squinted to see better in the dim light.

There was a snake. Lying still. Hidden in plain sight on top of the compost pile. Mottled pattern on scales against the mottled texture of dead, decaying leaves and grass. I recognized the markings: a rat snake. Indeed, it was our rat snake, whom we haven’t seen in a very long time, who we were dreading might have succumbed to the axe or shovel of a neighbor.

It looked at me. I looked at it. For a moment, neither of us moved. Then I tossed a chunk of watermelon rind, hoping to encourage it to move so that I might bury my scraps. It didn’t move. We both held our ground, staring at each other. Then I took a step forward. And with that, the snake turned and began to slither off the pile and into the undergrowth. It slithered shockingly quickly, but this was no small snake, so it took a fair while for it to clear the area.

I watched it as it retreated. I took another step, so that I might estimate its length: at least six feet long. As I said, no small snake. 

When it reached the fence, the snake stopped to watch me, and then he slithered behind a sheet of corrugated metal leaning against the fence back there. (I need to do something with that some time.)

Big snake. Lucky us. The rats in the alley don’t stand a chance.

© jumpingfish by David Hasan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License