June 15th: The trash

"Hey Squirrel, can you come down for a minute?", I yelled from the front porch. A few moments later he came bounding down out of the treetops.

"Hi Al", he said. "What's up?"

"I have a question for you", I said, not exactly sure how to phrase it. Finally I just said it: "The garbage, what do I do with it?"

"What do you mean?", Squirrel said.

"Well, I have a couple of bags of garbage I need to throw out. I'm not supposed to put it outside, because the bears might get into it. But I don't have any garbage cans, and I also haven't seen any garbage trucks. What do I do with it?", I said.

"Oh, I see", Squirrel said. "You just need to drive it up to the garbage dump. It's just down the road about five miles. I'm told they charge one dollar for each bag you drop off."

"You mean they don't pick it up here?", I asked.

Squirrel looked at me with a funny face, and asked, "Why would they do that?"

I couldn't think of a good way to answer him, so I just thanked him. He bounced back out into the forest, and I put my garbage bags in my car, and drove up to the garbage dump.