The Dollar Jeans

You may have heard that the Hillbilly family is having a problem with POOP in the Mansion garage. We won't get into that now, but a blogworthy incident has occurred.

Yesterday I entered the garage for my daily drive to town. Of course I smelled poop. I backed T-Hoe out onto the concrete, and went back in to shovel some sh!t. Farmer H keeps a curved blue plastic snow shovel out there for scooping the poop. He usually does it, when I'm gone with T-Hoe. But he's been derelict in his duties for several days, and I've done it myself.

It's easy enough to scoop the poop when temperatures are sub-freezing. Those turds are like petrified logs, and don't smell. They scoop right up, or roll along the garage floor ahead of the snow shovel. Once out the big door, they go over the side of the concrete, down a three-foot drop onto grass, to turn into fertilizer for next year's yard.

This time, temps were in the 50s. That poop stunk. And it didn't want to scoop or roll. Some of it smashed along the shovel edge, and crumbled, and was a pain to get out of the garage. Some of those crumbs must have landed on the mossy patch just outside the big garage doors. Unbeknownst to me.

On my way to town, I noticed the odor of poop inside T-Hoe's cabin. Cruising along at 55 mph, I put down the passenger window up front, and both rear windows, and turned up the fan on the heater. It worked! Until I rolled up the windows.

PEEEE YOOOO! What a stench! I was almost gagging from the smell.

That's not happenin'! Not on my sweet ride! T-Hoe is not going to stink like poop! I tried to brainstorm how to remedy the problem. I could take out the floor mat, in case I'd stepped in some poop. Use a wire brush to get rid of the muddy powder when it dried. Shampoo that mat with dish liquid or laundry detergent. I could get one of those mirror-hanging tree deodorizers at the car wash. I could leave a box of baking soda in T-Hoe to soak up the odor. Or put in a Bounce fabric softener.

At each stop, I ground my shoe soles on the pavement. Walked through any puddles I could find. Dried my shoes thoroughly on the entry mats at each establishment I entered. I bought two gallons of bleach for $1.15 apiece. Not the good stuff that was $2.66 on sale. I called Farmer H on the way home, to tell him of my plight. And to declare that this HAD to stop, and that I was not risking my A-Cad, parked most of the time inside that garage, but on the side away from the Mad Pooper's chosen dumping ground.

Farmer H was waiting for me when I arrived home. Like a trauma team waiting on the helipad for a 'copter. He opened up the garage door, but I didn't pull inside. Farmer H came out and got the bleach from T-Hoe's rear. He started pouring before I even walked through carrying the floor mat to lay out for safe keeping above dog height. I had to watch out for him as I passed through the garage. He had a push broom, making a tide of bleach roll across the smooth concrete floor towards the door. I told him I was leaving T-Hoe outside until my driveway walk, so as not to disrupt his scouring procedure.

When I came upstairs later to get supper ready, Farmer H was more talkative than usual.

"You know when you gave me that bleach?"

"Yeah. Did you get some on you?" Because it's happened to me before, while pouring it in the sink to clean the drain. I ruined a shirt. And now I don't work with bleach unless I'm wearing old clothes.

"Uh huh."

"Very bad?"

"Well, not bad. But you can see the spots."

"Were they your good jeans?"

"I got them for a dollar at Goodwill."

"Oh. Well. Maybe someone will die soon, and you can find another pair." Always the Pollyanna, seeing the bright side, the pot of gold at the end of the bleach-accident rainbow, our Mrs. HM.

"Eh. They'll just go from my good jeans to my wear-around-here-to-work-in jeans."

Maybe Farmer H learned a lesson. I doubt it. But one can always hope. T-Hoe didn't stink like poop today. Though he DID smell faintly like bleach.