I was putting away Christmas decorations when I discovered the maggot-covered skull cap and antlers from Don’s autumn buck. Laying right there in the garage. Like they owned the place.
How do maggots get into – and out of – a sealed plastic bag? They were just everywhere.
Don, a little chagrined at his forgotten antlers, strung them up against the shed to dry out. I know this little show all too well. Don secures some kind of animal bit, through hunt or hike. Said animal bit winds up somewhere in my house, indefinitely afloat in bleach or sealed in Ziploc bags.
Over at MeatEater, the founder, Steven Rinella, posts pictures on his Instagram account of the skulls and other dead animal bits his kids have turned into home décor. Some of that fauna décor is even functional, like the bones tied to a light bulb pull-string.
I think Rinella is brilliant, and I envy his gifted writing. But the day you walk into my house and find animal bones turned into light switches you know I’ve completely surrendered to Don. I’ll spend my days in camo, watching the calendar for the next hunting season. Studying the Pennsylvania Outdoor News, cover to cover. Huddled over a bug, determining if there’s a head, abdomen, and thorax, or just a head and thorax.
That helps you identify what kind of bug it is.
I was cleaning Saturday morning when I noticed the bucket in the laundry room utility sink. This is what I call the “contaminated bucket” because it’s for toilet stuff. When I need to transport the plunger or my Clorox Toilet Wand, I do it with this bucket.
Please don’t talk to me about keeping either of those things in the bathroom. They go in the toilet. They are forever covered in, at a minimum, E. coli.
I saved their bathrooms for last when I was moving Willie and Indy. I have a thing about bathrooms. I couldn’t stay in the bathrooms aboard the submarine Becuna when we toured it at the Independence Seaport Museum. I wasn’t too much better when it came to Willie and Indy’s bathroom.
I started with the easiest thing for my Obsessiveness – yeah, he’s earned the right to be capitalized – to handle. The medicine cabinets. I worked my way around each bathroom to the toilet brushes, nestled in their containers.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t put toilet brushes in my car unless Don was willing to let me scrap the car immediately afterward. The car would be permanently, irrevocably dirty.
So I told Willie and Indy I needed one indulgence, one gift for all of my hard work in getting them moved. I needed them to let me throw away the toilet brushes. I would buy them new ones. I already had them picked out, beautiful brushed nickel jobs perfectly matched to the new apartment.
Willie asked me to get therapy.
I don’t need therapy. I just needed to not have her nasty E.coli toilet brushes in my car.
So I have one bucket for contaminated things. I have a second bucket for “clean jobs” such as mopping. There’s no way I’m sticking a toilet brush in a bucket then cleaning my kitchen floor from that same bucket.
When I saw the contaminated bucket in the utility sink I immediately grew wary. I didn’t put it there, which leaves only Don. Don doesn’t subscribe to the whole contaminated bucket/ clean job bucket policy. If my buckets are Top Gun, Don is Maverick, breaking all the rules with relish.
Unease swept over me as I crept toward the utility sink to investigate what fresh horror Don had concocted. But all I could see was murky water filling the bucket to the brim, a little white thing sticking above its smooth surface.
And each time I went to my basket of cleaning supplies, the Comet cleanser was sitting out. Because why put it back in the basket when you can put it right next to the basket?
Later, as I headed into the backyard, the realization of the bucket’s contents hit me like a great white hits a seal. I turned my gaze to the shed. Sure enough, the ropes Don had used to string up the antlers, nine long months ago, hung empty in the breeze.
The antlers were soaking in bleach in the contaminated bucket. I mean, why not just, I don’t know, take away my Netflix? Close my Starbucks account? Destroy my iPad?
“I know what you’re doing,” I told him, our paths crossing like predator and prey, like Sherlock and Moriarty.
“What?” he asked, in that way that indicates he’s not wrong, I’m wrong. I’m wrong because of my Obsessiveness. Like my Obsessiveness hasn’t saved us from so many things.
My Obsessiveness is a hero.
Later, I found the antlers on top of the grill, a mistress taunting me. He loves me more, those antlers said. He has me on top of the grill. He’s never had YOU on top of the grill.
On top of the grill? Really? Even if the bleach didn’t damage the grill cover, the E.coli from the bucket could seep into the grill, killing us all. Listen. I know the Comet water probably killed the bucket’s E.coli. But if you are that confident in the ability of Comet to kill bacteria, go wipe down the inside of your toilet with some bleach. Then lick it.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Didn’t think so.
Now the ropes, of course, still hung from the shed. If the Comet doesn’t get put away when its container is an inch from the counter it came to rest upon, then the ropes are not getting removed from the shed. Ever, I’d say.
When Don’s mistress – I mean antlers – disappeared from the grill, I became even more nervous. Where did they go?
I asked Don but he refused to tell me.
I smelled them the moment I walked into our home office. I didn’t have to see them to know they were there.
“I don’t smell anything,” Don said. My Obsessiveness offered to spend an hour inside Don’s head. My Obsessiveness would help Don smell the antlers.
I told you my Obsessiveness is a hero.
So now the antlers sit in the office, like an affair that will never truly be forgotten. They taunt. They mock.
Last week, I discovered a book, The Home Edit. It’s a guide to organizing your home. The authors even have a line of containers at The Container Store, which I’m pretty sure is my nirvana.
Their book has sections about organizing your closet. Your pantry. Your drawers. But there’s no section about organizing your animal bits.
What do you guys think? I’m qualified, right? A little manual on organizing animal pieces?
I know the perfect container. It’s round, with a lid.
And gets picked up once a week.