Solved: The stinkin' mystery

I am always up for a good mystery. In fact, my friend Judy has loaned me the Elizabeth George With No One as Witness paperback which I will begin as soon as I finish House at Riverton. The fact that I have begun reading again, and am slowly taking up doing things in the "new normal" that I enjoyed so much during the "old normal" is a good sign, I think.

For almost a week now, I have been smelling on "my side of the house" a decomposing animal, which I assumed had been killed on the highway nearby. As days passed and the smell grew worse, I even took a stroll up the highway right-of-way looking for it, but found nothing except pieces of shredded tires.

Yesterday, however, when I went out to put more seed out for the birds, I noticed the smell was particularly strong right near deck at the back door and it occurred to me that I had been looking in all the wrong places for the dead animal. I bent down and stuck my head under the deck and at the far end of the wheelchair ramp and sure enough, I saw a lump.

I figured it was a dead opossum -- they seem to have a habit of dropping dead -- so I told Richard about it and he said he would take care of it.

And indeed he did. And it was not an opossum, it was a dead cat. For months and months a big black and white "Sylvester" type tom cat has shown up at our house to terrorize our kitty -- usually putting her up a tree.

He won't be terrorizing Squeaker any more. On more than one occasion I had asked Richard to please shoot it -- and he had investigated getting a CO2 pellet gun but couldn't find what he wanted at the Big Store That Shall Remain Nameless (which is happening more and more -- not finding what we want there).

Of course we have no clue what the cat died of or why he chose to crawl under our porch to do it, but the natural process of decay after death -- complete with bizarre carrion beetles -- will proceed out of sight and out of smell at the back of the property.

I am just very happy to once again smell sweet Missouri air wafting through the window and will spare you all any further description about this -- it was my job to carry the corpse in a garbage bag to the back of the property and dump it out (Richard was worried that the beetles would not be able to get out of the bag -- we're crazy, I think), and it was all I could do to keep from throwing up, which is not something I want to dwell on any more because in a few minutes I will commence cooking breakfast..

Richard saw a 30-minute documentary on biscuits the other night. He wants them for breakfast, so we'll see how it goes.