It was a Saturday morning and I was out in the front yard with a leaf sweeper. There weren\u2019t a lot of leaves but too many to rake and I was making my way up and down the yard at a steady pace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Near one of the large trees in the yard, I stopped. There was a smell and it was horrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As protocol dictates, I checked my shoes. Nothing there, but there was\u2026something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I moved the leaf sweeper back the way I had come and started looking around on the ground – assuming it was some kind of poop, though it didn\u2019t really smell like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, I found something horrible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was roughly spherical and about the size of a golf ball. Clearly organic, it was a solid mass – mostly tan in color with some light purple and patches that looked like fat that were nearly white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A tiny part of me was curious. What was this? How long had it been there? What animal had it come from? And what was inside?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the rest of me – that has seen too many movies that start just like this – knew that even if this wasn\u2019t an evil fleshy mass holding an alien parasite ready to leap out and infect me, it would still be something that I wanted no part of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went and got a shovel and a plastic bag. And I found a stick, which I used to carefully turn over the mass. It was about the same on the other side and I confirmed the overall shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still no clues, so I scooped it up with the shovel and put it in the bag – which I set aside and partially knotted so I could reopen it if I found anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t see anything so I went back to using the leaf sweeper. I kept noticing a smell, though, and stopped to investigate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hadn\u2019t been quick enough to stop before and had rolled over something I think related to the mass. Something black and stringy, with smaller masses lodged inside. These strings had wrapped around the shaft of the leaf sweeper and were tangled into a foul smelling mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I flipped the sweeper over and got the bag open again. Armed with my trusty stick, I carefully began to unwind the strings – which I assumed at this point were squirrel intestines. Making the earlier mass perhaps a stomach?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took a while, but I finally got all the strings unwound and bagged. I tossed the stick in the bag as well for good measure and then closed it up for good this time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last step was to hose off the sweeper to finally be rid of the smell. I finished the lawn sweeping without incident, but I did manage to roll over some undiscovered dog poop in the backyard that required another round with the hose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The suburbs are no place for the weak of stomach or faint of heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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