Of all things...

Of all the things that have ended up in our backyard: the chip bags and soda cups blown in by the wind; the errant baseballs, soccer balls and Frisbees of neighborhood boys; the broken beer bottles and cigarette butts after late night college parties; even the street sign uprooted and dumped over the wall during one particularly riotous event; of all these things, none was so odd as what we found last week.

Let it be known that we don't often venture out into the backyard. It's a barren wasteland of dirt and weeds. But we've been hoping to change that. We have plans to add on a porch and patio, perhaps plant a few trees and a garden, maybe even put a lawn in someday. So we decided to tackle the weeds. Not ordinary weeds, mind you. Round, stickery weeds that break off and tumble just like you see in the Westerns. Bermuda grass growing unchecked, taller than my children, and full of leaping grasshoppers. These are the types of weeds we are talking about. Anyhow...it was a big project and there is no telling what we could have found in the jungle out there. But of all the things we might have expected, we never thought we'd find what we did.

And what was this mysterious object? Would anyone like to hazard a guess before I reveal our disturbing discovery? No? Alright, out with it already!

Twenty pounds of spoiled Jennie-O turkey!
What the heck?!?!

My last encounter with a raw turkey - Thanksgiving 2001 at BYU.
Despite the face, this venture turned out much tastier than the present one.

How did a rotten turkey end up in the backyard? And how long had it been there? It smelled foul, no pun intended. Maybe it hadn't been expired when it first came to it's final resting place. Perhaps the next door neighbor left it to thaw on the three inch thick wall separating our homes and a gentle breeze upset it. Or maybe the man in the house on the corner was planning a feast for his wife, but lost his nerve after she chased him down the street with a baseball bat screaming expletives. (True story, by the way.) Or were we just random victims of senseless Southside crime? We may never know. But at least now the yard is cleared so if anything like this should happen in the future, we can take care of it more quickly and may be able to avoid the stench.