I received a complaint about a dead buck that floated onto a homeowner’s well-manicured lawn along the banks of the Sebasticook River, a short distance from Clinton. The snowmelt had caused the river to rise drastically, and the rotting critter was beached high and dry and stunk to beat the heavens, to put it mildly.
The miserable task of removing the carcass unfortunately fell within the scope of my responsibilities. The last thing I considered was dragging the putrid-smelling beast across the lawn, loading it into the trunk of my cruiser, and riding off with it to dispose of it elsewhere. I wouldn’t be able to stand the smell in my cruiser for days on end if I did, especially with my weak stomach. It would have been a nightmare.
Looking around while I considered my options, I noticed that nobody was home. I thought about simply pushing the deer back into the river and letting it float away, but I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone downstream would be calling me about the same problem—and by then it would be worse than what it already was.
Then I had a brainstorm of sorts. I remembered I had some dynamite in my trunk, left over from removing a nuisance beaver dam the day before. What better way to resolve this issue than to blow the dead critter all to hell, far out in the middle of the stream?
I ran back to the cruiser and grabbed one stick of the explosives, an electrical cap, detonating wire, and other supplies. Then I dragged the stinking carcass back into the swift current, hoping that once I placed the explosive in its chest cavity it would float away from the house to an area where I could detonate the charge. This certainly sounded practical. Unfortunately, it didn’t go quite the way I hoped.
The stench from the decaying critter caused me to double over with a bad case of the dry heaves, but the job had to be done. I carved a hole in the chest cavity, and, quickly sucking in and holding a breath of fresh air in my lungs, I inserted the stick of dynamite and electrical cap deeply into the carcass.
I managed to get the beast back into the current. It ever so slowly began its journey downstream, with me feeding out the electrical wires as it moved off. The moment of truth was near.
The next thing I knew, the deer had drifted back and was caught in a whirlpool directly in the middle of the river in front of me. Around and around it went.
I began to panic, knowing what I had to do, whether I wanted to or not. Voicing the usual warning before setting off a charge of explosives, I yelled, “Dynamite! Dynamite! Dynamite!” and then connected the wires to the battery.
There was a tremendous boom, followed by a cloud of water and pieces of meat filling the sky. Instead of falling back into the river as planned, most of the buck dropped back over the complainant’s lawn.
To make matters worse, the complainant had returned home just as I detonated the charge. My timing couldn’t have been worse.
The homeowner, Freddy, rushed to my side, demanding to know just what the hell I thought I was doing.
Embarrassed by the carnage I’d created on his front lawn, I desperately tried to explain my reasons for proceeding as I had. I might just as well have been talking to myself. He never heard a single word I said, and it was quite obvious that no amount of talking was going to appease him. He was calling me names I hadn’t heard for years—and they weren’t very pretty. I feared he would assault me, but I decided perhaps I fully deserved the thumping should he choose to do so.
I spent the next two hours using Freddy’s wheelbarrow and rake, picking up pieces of meat and bones from his front lawn and hauling them up the road for disposal.
I was positive my act of stupidity would generate a personnel complaint from the main office, but it never did. I almost think Freddy came to feel sorry for me as I humbly apologized to him over and over after finishing my chore of cleaning up. I doubt his damned old manicured lawn ever looked so good!
I never heard from Freddy again. I wonder why he never calls anymore.