Monday, July 5, 2010

Lessons Learned In Pig Planning

Trash pick up in my neighborhood is on Wednesday. We probably should have had better planning when it came to disposing of the pig carcass. "Mom, do you have any heavy duty trash bags?" Sarah called from alongside the carved pig. I guess the trash bags I bought weren't heavy duty enough, but, that's all I had. Sarah and her friend disposed of the carcass and the party continued.

A few hours later, when my brother and sister in law were leaving, they pointed out a box sticking out of a trash bag in the side yard. "The dogs are getting into that, whatever it is..." my sister in law said. I went over and picked up the bag and put it along side the garage, out of dog's reach. It was swarmed with black flies, so I figured it was the pig remains.

The next morning, while waiting for the plumber to come and fix the broken hose bib, I took another trash bag and placed it over the top of the box, trying to contain the contents (it was gross) and tied it off and put it in the garage next to the (full) trash bin.

When I pulled in the garage after work on Monday, I stopped short of pulling all the way in: The gross box/bag of hog carcass was oozing fluid on to the garage floor, and said fluid was crawling with maggots. I donned industrial strength rubber gloves, grabbed a plastic table cloth cover that was waiting for the washing machine, and a large roll of duct tape. I purposely squinted to blurr my vision so the image of squirming maggots wouldn't be permanently imbedded in my mind's eye. I spread out the plastic sheet of table cloth cover and maneuvered the oozing blob of carcass onto the plastic cover and taped it closed. I poured bleach on the garage floor and swept the bleached maggots out to the driveway. I had 24 hours before I could put it out to the curb for trash pick up. What a stinky, nauseating mess.

A couple of hours later, Sarah was in the garage carrying on about how GROSS it was and THEY'RE EATING THROUGH THE PLASTIC! and other such exclamations. I grabbed a tarp and a quilted drop cloth that we used to cover the kegs before tapping them. We wrapped the maggot-fare in the tarp and then in the quilted cloth. We secured it with a mile of duct tape, placed it in the bed of Kev's truck, and he and Sarah took it to......... well, a commercial dumpster a short distance away. I'm sure someone would have thought they were dumping a dead body...heaven help anyone who chose to dumpster dive to investigate. It truly makes me wonder how crime scene investigators can stand the stench of decomp or the sight of maggots and smell of rotting flesh.

Lessons learned regarding the disposition of the pig carcass - better planning indeed should there be another pig roast!

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