Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.Why Canada geese know not to cut corners by J. G. Fabiano There I stood at the end of my driveway, looking out over my front yard for the first time since late November. Obviously I've looked at my yard before but this was important because I was pretty sure the last snow had fallen, which meant there was nothing to conceal all the debris that had found its way onto my property. Before walking on my lawn I tested the ground to make sure it was dry enough, so my feet wouldn't make craters that would mean the death of a lawnmower that I wanted to make it through another year. Not that my lawnmower is that old. I just have a tendency to destroy all machinery I come in contact with. The first thing I did was pick-up all the cigarette butts around the perimeter of my lawn. I still can't figure out why people throw things from their cars they know will never biodegrade, but then, I don't understand why people throw any type of garbage out of their cars and into the road - do they think it will all just disappear by magic? Do they think at all? Can they think? Enough with the hard questions. This year I counted 86 cigarette butts thrown onto my lawn. I looked at my house and wondered where the sign was hidden that advertised how my property was one big neighborhood ashtray. Or did my lawn have some sort of a magnetic attraction for the filters so all the discarded butts in the western world ended up on my property? As I picked up the cigarette butts I also counted the sometimes small and sometimes immense piles of dog poop that were also deposited on my property, even though I do not have a dog of my own. This winter produced a fine crop of dog dung. I was impressed by the different varieties deposited on my lawn which suggested all the different neighborhood breeds and their exotic diets. Some were small and easily retrievable, if their owners had bothered to carry anything as burdensome as a plastic baggy. Others looked like they might have been left by something the size of a rhinoceros and required a front end loader to move. I filled a large garbage bag to be left in front of my house for pickup, wondering if I should put a sign on it that said `Free.' Inspecting the farthest corner of my lot I saw that the lawn I had planted the year before had been replaced by a mud hole. Since I live on a corner lot most of the cars that pass by apparently want to save wear and tear on the pavement by driving across my lawn. Examining the deep ruts made by cars and SUV's I couldn't help but notice how the middle of the road looked brand new because so few cars had ever used it. This year I noticed tracks that must have been produced by a tractor trailer. I wondered if maybe I should install landing lights in case a passing 747 might want to make a side trip over the corner of my lot. The ruts made by drivers who, apparently have enormous difficulty staying out of the scenery, were so deep I thought that instead of planting lawn seed again this year I might plant some nice salt marsh grasses and hoping a flock of Canadian geese would call it their summer home but, I guess this wouldn't work because the geese are smarter than most drivers and know enough to avoid a corner lot. This year, I can report some mysterious new objects were deposited on my property. There were many types of plastic container that I had never seen before. One was large and rectangular and looked like it must have contained a rather large submarine sandwich. When I opened it up it still contained a rather large submarine sandwich. Or at least I think it was. I also found an assortment of chicken bones thrown into the swale where the drainage pipe goes under the road. Or I thought they were chicken bones until I picked them up and saw that they must have come from a very large chicken - unless somebody in the neighborhood is running a secret ostrich farm. I decided not to ask questions and put them in the plastic garbage bag with the doggy poop. Wandering around my property with a second large garbage bag I picked up Styrofoam plates, soggy paper napkins, newspapers to which I do not subscribe and assorted plastic bags with things in them that I didn't care to examine closely. I even found a five-dollar bill I figured must have been a tip from the guy who left the bones. Then, just when I thought I was done for the day, I noticed one stray coffee cup stuck in a far corner of my lawn surrounded by little rivers of water. My first thought was to leave it there but because I cannot bear to leave a job undone I decided to wade out and pick it up. At first I tried to reach it by walking along the railroad ties along one edge of my garden. I was almost there when I lost my footing on the slick wood and my foot slipped off and sank deep into the cold wet muck. It took a good heave to free my foot and when it came out, with a loud sucking noise, there was an earthworm the size of a bicycle inner tube wrapped around my shoe. I shook off the earthworm and realized I wasn't going to get much closer to the cup, which was still about five feet away, unless I was prepared to get my feet a lot wetter and dirtier than I wanted. So, I looked around, found a large twig and decided to use that to snag the cup out of the swamp. I almost made it too, until gravity got the better of me. Slowly I felt myself toppling forward and, even though I paddled my arms backwards as fast as I could there wasn't enough air resistance in the world to counteract my forward momentum, and the next instant I was on my hands and knees in the muck. For a moment I just stayed like that, unable to believe what had happened. I saw myself as a cow stuck in a bog and pictured the fire department having to use their ladder truck to get a harness around me and pull me out. I wallowed around, trying to pull myself out of the mud, making sure I covered myself from head to toe in the cold and filthy water and finally made it back to the railroad ties that surrounded my garden, so I could pull myself up. That was when I realized I had left the coffee cup behind.With nothing left to lose I turned and sloshed back across the bog to pick it up only to have it crumble under my grip leaving something cold and squishy to ooze between my fingers that I hoped was mud. About half an hour later, after I had showered and changed, I was back at the end of my driveway, putting my clothes and winter gardening shoes in the bag with the doggy poop and the bones. At least I could take comfort in the knowledge that a task I truly hated was over until the fall. Just at that moment an SUV came around the corner and a cigarette butt sailed out the window and onto my yard. The End.
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