My gift to the dwellers of the Cove is garbage. More specifically, the removal of it.

Our garbage situation is somewhat weird down here. Our landlady has multiple properties in South Seattle where the dumpsters are not full on pick-up day. So rather than pay for garbage service on the island, she picks up the 5 small, blue toters herself, on an apparently random schedule, and carts them to Seattle in her old truck.

I can see where this makes financial sense. I can also imagine, given her complaints about the garbage company, that they did something in a way that was not how she would have done it, and that was the end of that relationship. I've owned two homes on the island and never had any problem with the garbage folks. I put it out, they picked it up. That seems to me to be the extent of the putter-outer / picker-upper relationship.

Anyhoo, we also have rats and raccoons to deal with here. They pick the garbage apart. They can open a lid easily, especially when the garbage hasn't been tamped down and the lid is actually left open. Give them a wind gust or two, and they don't have to work at all to get a free meal.

This morning I went to take out my garbage, and saw that the critters had gotten in. One can was overflowing. So I went upstairs, got my rubber gloves, and proceeded to reposition said garbage. Then I realized that there were four other cans that were not even full, and that someone had been lazy in their deposit. Come on, folks, have you never lived among critters? These raccoons live up to 30 years, so they've figured out every way to get into the trash. Why make it any easier?

(There is a bumper sticker on the island that reads: "Tipping Trash Cans: Raccoons Against Gentrification". I'm all for raccoons tipping the trash cans of the rich, but I don't know what they're doing in MY garbage. Someone needs to point them down the beach to the McMansion area. This is Proletariat Flats, critters.)

Garbage redistributed, I began picking up random bits of trash that had blown around onto the ground. Then I saw the accumulated crap between the cement propane-tank enclosure and the embankment. Oy vey. Discarded dumbbells, old plant pots, blankets, and two perfectly good aluminum trash cans with nothing but rusted bike parts in a soup of old leaves and brackish water. Of course I cleaned that up, too. One of the garbage cans even has a lid, and can be used as one more container to serve our often unmet container needs. The weights from the dumbbell are now holding down three of the garbage toter lids. Repurposing, Vashon style.

So, Cove denizens, human or otherwise, I cleaned up the crap. I know it won't last, and I probably didn't do it the way the landlady would have, but tough titty. For at least one day, I don't have to be part of the problem. Until someone tries to use the wrong can for their trash, and gets a phone call from the landlady. You're on your own there.