OMG -'whole' opposum

Truly, nothing stenches worse than roadway carcasses or is more potentially horrifying. A few years ago, I was riding to the cemetery during the Memorial Day holiday, high in the Allegheny Mountains of northwest Pennsylvania, and a deer lay in the roadway, it's midsection severed with multi-vehicle passages, each rolling one lefthand set of wheels over the unfortunate creature lying dead on one side within that densely forested region. Youths on three-wheel ATVs paced us coming from the opposite direction, the driver and I in a minivan that (yep) rolled right over. The Memorial Day observance was the priority, however, no matter how urgent the instinct to heft the two deer sections into the back of the vehicle.

Today, as planned, I returned to the St. Mary's Thrift Shop addressed on SE Ocean Boulevard here in Stuart, Florida, and purchased four used pullovers. Short-sleeve shirts were advertised at a special price of $2.00 each, and the category was not quite 'pullover' but suddenly a voice shouted out, "Today only! All clothes $1.00!" Thrift-store tops are the best to wear beneath backpacks, such premises being held to at least a minimum standard of quality yet with clothes made available in large sizes that do not tear.

The return walk on the opposite (south) side of SE Ocean Boulevard was an encounter with an absolutely putrid opposum carcass that was completely dominated with feasting grubs -- small ones on top and a side-by-side layer of large grubs beneath, the remains of the dead beast lying on the extended concrete section of the curb at the side of the roadway. The scenario resembled a 'rack of opposum', surrounded from all perspectives with white grubs. Workers nearby sweated with mechanical equipment to remove a large palm tree rooted in the soil, while gazing at the 'Diet of Worms'. I was reminded in a gruesome way of a small eatery in San Francisco, CA, titled 'The Grubstake', because I tried to lift the carcass with a grasp on the tail but it simply pulled loose/off in my fingers necessitating the use of a plastic bag to heave the carcass into some grass near a resident's privacy fence.

The new vinyl swimpool is a total success, permitting hours-long soaks in clean fresh water from the hose, while orange flowers and small leaves fall and float. It is a fabulous design that requires only inflation of a ring printed with baby turtles and frogs that holds semi-rigid circular side-wall and flexible bottom in place during water-fill time. A flattened spoonlike beetle flecked with sparkly golden streaks came to visit, while ants, spiders, wasps and other microfauna toiled all around. One wasp carried away a brown spider stunned from the vehicular action of the morning's grass-cutting session, crawling carefully over each shredded blade of grass to an unknown destination with its totally intact arachnid haul.