Spring, Snakes & Big Green Trash Cans on Wheels

The stories in this column are true. Averett lives a dull life in rural Southside Virginia with his wife Management, two children and a rotating assortment of goats, dogs, cats, snakes and other local fauna.

When I was writing about the signs of spring I neglected to mention snakes.  It just isn’t spring without snakes.  I have seen several snakes crossing the road but Sunday was the first one I have seen this year in the yard.  It was a beautiful black rat snake. I was pleased, as was the daughter.  My bride and the daughter’s husband were less than enthusiastic.

Management was telling the son-in-law about the time the four-year-old daughter caught a snake and brought it inside.  She made it sound like there was something wrong with a four-year old catching a snake, identifying it by its scientific name and presenting it to her mother as a gift.  Sometimes it is hard to understand what women are thinking.

On one of our first dates and several years prior to her promotion to Management, we were on the way to see her parents when I saw an Eastern King snake crossing the road. There was a lot of traffic so I just leaned out the door and snagged the snake.  Then, since I needed both hands to drive, I attempted to hand the snake to Management.  I say attempted because she was no longer in the truck.  For some reason as I slowed down to snag the snake, she had decided she wanted to walk.

She never mentioned she had one of those Eve things regarding snakes until after we were married when I was preparing to move “all those snakes” as she referred to them to our new home.  I was somewhat surprised.  I had never even considered a half a dozen or so snakes as “all of those snakes.”  For that matter, I had never considered forty or fifty snakes as “all of those snakes.”  The way I see it is as long as all of them have names they are individuals no matter how many there are.

I am pretty disappointed in the magic trash can I borrowed from the son.  For some reason it doesn’t work for me like it does for him.  My bride Management and I usually don’t generate much garbage unless you consider some of the stuff I write.  As far as household waste goes we are responsible for less than one small bag a week that actually goes to a landfill somewhere.  We sort out the paper, cardboard, glass, plastic and metal and compost the food scraps that the animals won’t eat.

, We just haven’t had a need for a big trash can.  At least I haven’t until I started cleaning out the barn.  After sorting out all of the good stuff and making a metal pile for recycling there are several loads of trash for me to haul.  Then I happened to notice the son’s magic trash can; it is big enough to last us for a typical month but the neat thing is his doesn’t have to be emptied.  It just sits in front of his house and he has been putting trash in it for several years and hasn’t had to empty it yet.

Sometimes when I stop by it is full and then a day or so later it is empty.  I don’t understand how it works but he never hauls trash.  Maybe I need to research some more science fiction.  Is there a transporter or some sort of time warp involved?  In any case, I snatched his can and brought it to the barn and filled it up.  I waited several days and was going to fill it up again and found it was still full.

It has been two weeks and nothing has happened.  The son says in order for it to work I have to roll it to the sidewalk on Monday or Friday evenings and it will be empty in the morning.  This is going to be a problem; the nearest sidewalk is two or three miles away.  It would be easier to load it on a truck and take it to the dumpsters.

I guess this is just another one of those high tech gadgets that only work if you are under thirty.