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The fine art of garbage pick-up

Kathy Werner - Columnist
Posted 8/13/20

During the pandemic, I have been training for a new job. Exciting, I know. Well, let me tell you how I am honing my skills. Or maybe I should tell you who I'm hoping to work for (fingers crossed!).

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The fine art of garbage pick-up

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During the pandemic, I have been training for a new job. Exciting, I know. Well, let me tell you how I am honing my skills. Or maybe I should tell you who I'm hoping to work for (fingers crossed!).

I am hoping to get a job as a stringer for the National Enquirer. A stringer is someone not on the regular staff of a newspaper, but who contributes to stories for them and is paid for individual stories. As you know, the National Enquirer is a crack journalistic operation that specializes in cooking up stories about famous people based on little or no evidence.

Apparently, they are also available to spike stories. Wikipedia defines spiking: “Spiking is the act of withholding a story from publication for editorial, commercial, or political reasons. Its facts and grammar may be valid, but its content is deemed to be at odds with the interests of the paper, or the paper's interpretation of what is good for its community.” This would include, in the case of The Enquirer, stories about the porn stars that have had affairs with one D.J. Trump, for instance.

But I digress. One of their tried and true journalistic ploys is rifling through the garbage of famous people. Sounds like fun, right?

Well, this is where I am currently doing my training. This all just kind of fell into my lap, if I'm being honest.

See, we have a bear in our neighborhood. Or maybe some bears. I couldn't be sure because I'm never awake when he, she, or they go foraging for food in my neighbors' garbage cans.

Like most of us these days, the bears like to get their meals to go, so after tipping over the garbage cans and sorting through the bags, they choose one or two particularly promising Sacks O'Garbage and drag them into the woods behind my house. There they tear through the bags, looking for any tasty leftovers and leaving the rest strewn every which way on the forest floor.

All of which would be fine, I guess, except for the fact that said garbage is now right behind my garden in the back, so unless I want to look at a garbage dump for eternity, I have to put on my Wellies, grab some gloves and a bag and go to pick up the remains of the remains.

I am usually able to identify where the garbage came from by some stray piece of mail left behind. And then, like any archeologist or forensic journalist, I can tell you about the habits of the garbage producers.

Some eat every meal off paper plates, it seems, and order a lot of take-out. Another buys a lot of lottery tickets but seems to have few winners. Again, I see quite a few take-out containers in that garbage too. I've found medical notices, bills, and other important personal papers carelessly torn but highly readable. I could tell you things!

But, of course, I won't. I have to live here. Nevertheless, I am becoming quite a skilled garbage picker, and if The Enquirer is ever in need of one, I want them to know I'm available.

Me? I keep my garbage cans in my garage where the bears can't get at them. And I seriously wish my neighbors would do the same.

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