Despite

our smugness over the fact that we're composting in the backyard and therefore our garbage, compost, etc., aren't overflowing even now in the midst of a garbage strike.

 

Pause.

 

Take a breath.

 

Despite all that, the green city compost bins got extremely smelly in the heat on Friday and over Shabbos, so today I decided to smuggle their contents to the apartment where we're cat-sitting.  There has GOT to be a silver lining to the horrible, thankless task, right?

 

Anyway, Ted did the awful deed but I got a full report.  (he went back to stare in the bin a few times)

 

Maggots.

 

Maggoty maggots.  Squirming in the bin.

 

I have seen maggots.  I can imagine maggots.

(once in my youth I left a shabbos chicken carcass sitting for two weeks in the heat of summer and came back to wash the dishes - where had we been eating for two weeks?!? - and it was maggoty in the bones and the jelly-gravy-sauce still left in the pan)

 

Sheer, primal, revulsion.  Gack.  Shudder.

 

Anyway, he bagged them in a yellow garbage bag, washed his hands, bagged the bag in another bag and then we slipped the whole slippery mess into a cloth grocery bag so we could smuggle it undetected into the building.

 

Mission accomplished - the smelly garbage is gone.

 

Ewwwwww....

 

I left the bin open in the rain to rinse it out, and have now left it upended over the compost pile to fully drain and "air."

I'm a big believer in "airing."

 

There is nothing but sun and rain to wash away the stink and maggots.