It was spectacular. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The dumpster wasn’t meant to be lived in. Dumpsters are meant to hold waste. You put what you no longer need in there. What no longer serves its purpose. What you don’t want in your house anymore. What you need to let go of.
The dumpster was manufactured by a company that specialized in making dumpsters. All day long, they built dumpsters. They researched how to make better dumpsters. How to keep them looking clean even though they were filled with dirty trash. How to keep the smell contained. It was a lucrative trade, building dumpsters. Trash was everywhere. Disguising trash was good business.
The raccoons moved in on a Monday. It was raining and they needed a dry place. The dumpster was mostly dry and it had so much stuff. One person’s trash is another raccoon’s treasure and the raccoons rummaged gleefully, holding up a fork, a deflated ball, a toy truck, a sock. They licked the grease off boxes and drank the dredges out of bottles.
It felt pretty good, living in that mostly dry dumpster with enough food to keep them from having to hunt and piles of crap to keep them entertained. Why would they ever leave?
So they didn’t. Ever. They ate, slept, and shat in that dumpster. Every Thursday a big truck came and turned the dumpster upside down and vigorously shook it until most of the crap, figurative and literal, poured out of the dumpster and into the truck. The raccoons developed a system in which they hooked their claws into a wide seam and sometimes each other and held on for dear life. You’d think they would find a mostly dry place full of crap that didn’t get turned upside down once a week. But you’re not a raccoon. Right?
Now if you’re wondering how they managed this dumpster shaking routine without routinely losing raccoons: of course they lost raccoons. All the time. It’s a flipping stupid system they had going on.
Generations of raccoons later, it happened. The combination of damp garbage, rotten food, and layers upon layers of raccoon poop created a kind of peat throughout the entire dumpster. Even from several feet away, the smell made your eyes water and triggered your gag reflex.
The exact moment it started is up for debate. It could have been the oil soaked shirt. It could have been the careless match. It could have been the anaerobic decomposition. I think it was that.
It started with some smoke. Which should have been alarming, even to raccoons. But they stayed. And then, well. It was spectacular. A full blown dumpster fire.
I saw the fire. Then I saw the rattling and I heard the horrible noise of several somethings in the dumpster. So I stuck a broomstick in there and propped up the lid.
Well, those raccoons hissed and growled and they backed away--into the middle of the dumpster fire. Like *I* was the threat. I was trying to get them out, for crying out loud. Stupid raccoons.
If your world is burning down and someone tries to cast you out--maybe getting cast out is a really good thing. Maybe getting cast out is what saves your life. Get your claws out of each other and get out of the freaking dumpster.
Katie Carey is a spiritual midwife, community herbalist, and theater artist devoted to real-izing the Emerging Story. Katie spent 10 years doing theater in the Northwest, followed by 8 years of theater in Chicago. She then decided what she really wanted to do was raise a family in a hand-built hobbit hole in the middle of a mud puddle on a Montana farm. So that’s what’s happening now. Katie's works include How to Re-Ignite Your Internal Fire, Foul-Mouthed Mystic, Vasilisa + Baba Yaga (or: How to Destroy Your Enemies without Losing Your Soul), Excommunicated! The Musical, New Creation Stories for the Emerging Paradigm, The Real Life Adventures of Lizzy and Rilla, and Solitaire.
Katie has degrees in theater and spirituality, so she can act like she cares.
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