Backyard

I’d put it off too long. 

I should have done it daily all winter, not sporadically, between all the snowfall amounts that covered the frozen treasure hunt. Before all the spring rain, and more rain, and then more rain, leaving everything mushy in our backyard. 

So be it. I’m aware of the poop soup caused by my sweet little Scout, the pint-sized terrier-cross who randomly chooses lawn real estate to use as her toilet, just to keep me guessing. She’s 15 now, so she makes her own rules and we don’t argue. Thank goodness she’s little, and thus, her gifts to nature proportionally match her stature and not her attitude.  

While it’s not a fun chore, the hardest part of my clean-up mission is bending down without making a symphony of sounds from either my creaking knees or the whining self-expression of my fate. Or tipping over. My gravity has shifted hard. Bending over now is like the sensation a child feels after being spun on a roundabout at the park, then trying to walk again, only less fun and more “call an ambulance.” 

I think we’ve had full sun for three days so far this season, so on one of them, I decided to don the rubber gloves and rubber boots, gathered plastic bags, and planned to walk the mine-field of poop in the yard. I stood on the back deck to look out over the greenish field of vision before me, scoping out the terrier’s territory. That’s when I saw it. Oh the horror. 

Before me was a greening, soggy sprawl of lawn with an alarmingly significant amount of brown, sun-baked tubular nuggets resting on the grass. Everywhere. Like, everywhere. 

I felt myself throw up a little in my mouth, regretting the coffee and oatmeal now. How had I let it come to this? This was my fault. “You wanted a dog,” the Carpenter would scold me. I know, I know. 

I pulled the gloves up a little higher, shook the white garbage bag to fill it with air, maxing out its capacity because, clearly, I was going to need it. One last inhale, before my rubber-booted foot dared step off the deck. 

Wait. What? I must be seeing things, I thought. Suddenly, I noticed that all the brown nuggets splayed out before me were resting in straight lines, spaced out perfectly across the entire yard, like angry mud-poop soldiers ready for battle. Had Scout actually created a grid pattern with her posterior planning? I mean, she’s clever, but like, really? She won’t even retrieve a ball after the first throw, so, unlikely. This was odd.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw an unfamiliar black metal tool leaning against the house. I’d never seen it before. The odd-looking instrument had a long handle with a step platform at the bottom and several external prongs underneath it. Gene Simmons boots as a garden tool. 

Oh, I get it. I see now. It’s an aerator. The brown sun-baked tubular nuggets were soil lifted by the aeration tool and thus not an actual fecal army from an over-achieving terrier-cross. 

The Carpenter had been busy, not Scout. 

And not to complain, but can I just say, this made my task significantly harder, which both the Carpenter and Scout enjoyed immensely. Jerks.