Spring Cleanup

With spring just around the corner my "signifcant other" (no not my alternate personality, Raul) but Catherine, pulled me out of bed, last weekend, insistent that today was the day we clean up the backyard. A whole winter of unsupervised play by two large dogs had created a blighted landscape which resembled "no man's land" in the Great War.

Catherine was concerned about what our neighbours would think. I was more nonchalant suggesting that we just wait for all the snow to melt before we take any action. However last weekend I was shocked out of my lethargy when I realized that all the other snow in Orangeville had melted; except in our back yard. How odd, why was our lawn still covered inch deep in the white stuff?

I immediatley began dreaming up a number of possible scientific theories to explain this atmospheric anomaly. These were all dashed, when peering out the window and actually focusing, I realized it was not snow at all: it was plush toy stuffing.

You see last fall Catherine had been give a giant bag full of stuffed animals. Rather than distributing them to needy children as the doner had intended, Catherine doled them out to the dogs as toys which they of course, took out with them to the yard. Now the yard was covered in toy remains.

No wonder Catherine's was worried about what people would think. I thought perhaps we could cover up for our garbage lawn by explaining that our yard was being used as a sound stage for the filming of Christmas specials. However the fact that neither Bing Crosby nor Rita MacNeil had been seen at the house might raise suspicions.

What to do but clean it all up? Catherine advised me that the plan was as follows: I go outside and do the entire yard and lawn, while she stay inside and do some light vacumning.

Outside in the midst of the detritus, the scene was even more awful. It looked like The Teddy Bear Picnic Massacre: half eaten bunny heads, bears without eyes, damp, dirty plush toy skins bereft of guts hung lifelessly from decorative thorn bushes.

Adding to the "Terminator-esque" terrain were the many bits of half chewed rubber hosing that the dogs had brought out from the garage or dug up from the garden to use as tug o' war equipment. Strangely they had also got into a box of electrical wiring and Christmas stuff stored in the garage and had stewn connector cables and Christmas tree bulbs across the yard.

I also discovered vampired cans of Guiness in amongst the mess; pierced with teeth marks, the dark delicious liquid sucked out last Christmas by thirsty dogs when I had unfortunately used the garage as a makeshift fridge.

The clean up was not an easy job made more difficult by the fact that teddy bear stuffing sticks to everything. The use of a rake was required. However Findley, the Australian Shepherd, thought I had invented a wonderful game in which Player 1 (me) would rake and he, Player 2, was to attack and bite the prongs. When I put my rake down to take Findley inside, the other dog would grab the rake by the handle and run away into the bushes with it, requiring me to chase her around the perimeter of the yard.

No doubt our neighbours were relieved to finally see action taken, fearing, I am sure, that we were soon intending to fix and store old cars on the lawn.

Now if I can only get it together to take the Christmas Wreath off the front door.