I like to get the trash out early on trash night, but Roommate’s philosophy is, “Every bit of trash generated in this house before the truck comes tomorrow needs to be in the bin before the truck gets here.” Our compromise is I take the green and black bins out at 7 (set for when I used to arrive home from work before the COVID; why change it now?), and then I take out all the late trash and the grey bin at 9 or thereabouts (I’m flexible).
Monday night is trash night, and the path from the side door of the garage to the curb faces southeast, so in summer, I usually look out at a dark blue sky, about the color of the t-shirt I’m wearing with my name on the back.
About a month ago, on a Sunday evening, I noticed a small brown spider spinning a web between the black bin’s lid and the pool lounge chair stored on the hooks under the eaves above it as I came out to toss the empty Chinese takeout containers into the bin. I opened the lid and felt bad for the spider. I told it to learn to anchor its web to a stationary object.
The next week, I noticed the spider was spinning its web between the lounge chair and the side of the black bin, but not to the lid. It was farther to go and a longer span, but the spider was bigger and seemed able to handle it. I told it the side of the bin was only relatively more stable than the lid, but did it listen? No! Sure enough, come Monday at 7, its web was deconstructed in an unplanned fashion.
The next week, the still bigger spider was spinning its web between the lounge chair on the hooks under the eaves and the metal whatnot with a flat top that used to be where I stored my cigar ashtray but now is a temporary holding place for bags of plant food on gardening days. You know the one next to the black bin? The top of the whatnot is lower than the top of the bin, but the spider was still bigger and able to manage the even longer span. I knew it was the same spider because it stopped in its spinning and looked at me. Then it shook its still incomplete web, looked down at the flat metal whatnot and shook its web, then looked up at the lounge chair and shook its web, then looked back at me. I told it the flat metal whatnot was probably more stable than the black bin but was unpredictable, especially on weekends at sunset when peak spinning hours collide with peak finishing-the-gardening hours.
Tonight, as I went out at 7 for the first trash run, I looked up into the Sky that was the color of my blue t-shirt and saw the negative shape outline of a large spider the size of a half dollar spinning upside down on a web from the lounge chair on the hooks under the eaves to the woodpile across the sidewalk. I usually have my phone with me, and I reached into the tech pocket of my Wrangler cargo shorts to take a picture, but I had left the phone on the charger upstairs. Like you do.
On a side note, we have an 11-year-old cat, Olivia, who has been an indoor/outdoor cat from kittenhood. However, since the COVID started and since the increase in coyote sightings started, we have kept her inside. Her litter box is in the garage, about 5 steps from the door from the house. Her litter area is always kept clean, and there is a golf club rack between the litter box and her food. The clothes washing area, including washer and dryer with the six foot high drying rack, are just to the left of the door, and just beyond washer and dryer is the side door to outside and the trash bins and the blue Sky the color of my t-shirt and the ever growing spider.
We also have a feral cat and her litter of four living between our fence and the neighbor’s fence. Mama cat has been living there about two years. The kittens appear to be a fall litter; they are approaching that one-year old cat look. They play like kittens do among the potted plants and in the rose garden, and they stop to drink out of the garden watering pail and eat the kitten food I buy that Roommate puts out.
Olivia knows they’re out there because she can see them from the window ledge drinking out of her water pail. And she has seen the new food bag that she doesn’t get treats from.
She has begun peeing on the rugs in front of the washer and dryer next to the door outside. The Vet says she is marking her territory because we’re not letting her outside. It’s not so bad, though. You can pick the rugs up and put them right into the washer if it’s not being used, then take them right out of the dryer and lay them down again, and bet how long it’s going to be before they’re wet again, but that game gets old.
This morning, I cut down an empty cardboard box, spread a small plastic kitchen trash bag in the bottom of the box, placed it close to the door, but not in the way, and spread a new kind of clumping litter that costs $28.00 a bag on top of the plastic.
Tonight, around 7, I noticed some of the litter was out of the box on the newspaper underneath it, and the plastic bag was torn, and bits of newspaper were sliced in a claw pattern. I called Roommate to come take a look.
“What?”
“Come here. I’ve got two things to show you.”
First was the used cat box. But Roommate had apparently already seen the used cat box. Like big deal. She had also brought some newly created trash for me to take out to the bins.
I forgot all about my phone and turned to take the trash out.
“Aren’t you going to clean the litter box?”
Right! Every bit of trash must be in the bin before the truck gets here! And what better time than the present? I felt like Basil Fawlty.
I grabbed the litter cleaning shovel from where it hangs on the golf club rack, knelt down, and scooped one giant urine clump and two smaller faecal clumps from the temporary litter box into the Sunday newspaper, (LA Times Food Section!), stood up, and opened the side door as far as it would open.
There are gallon plastic bottles of white vinegar, bleach, isopropyl, and ammonia on the ground between the clothes dryer and the laundry baskets and some kind of storage spot for hand garden tools and glass cleaner, so the side door doesn’t open fully, so I have to turn sideways to squeeze between the dryer and the door to get out. I need to be careful not to knock any of the magnets off the dryer cabinet. I hate having to turn sideways to get through a door, but I made it out without spilling any used litter.
I stopped to see the spider and realized I had forgotten to get my phone and forgotten to show Roommate the second thing I had called her to see.
I opened the door slowly, and sure as I’m standing here, the dryer door was open, blocking my entrance. I stood patiently while Roommate cleaned the lint filter, then got the water bottle to spray the lint filter, which I don’t think you’re supposed to do, then sprayed inside the dryer and started wiping something off the wall inside the drum.
“How long are you going to be?” I asked.
“I thought you would be gone longer,” she said, and continued wiping down the inside of the drum.
I pulled the door shut, turned to take the litter contents out to the black bin, and walked nose first into the spider I was going to photograph and its sidewalk-spanning web. I flailed a bit but didn’t lose any cat litter!
“You dumb SOB,” I said, but quiet so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. Or maybe that was the spider talking. Sometimes I can’t tell.
I’m still pulling bits of spider web from my blue t-shirt the color of the Sky with my name on the back and from my elbows and from my hair and wondering where and how big that spider’s going to be next week!
The Billy Pulpit 