when it begins to get real hot
late spring
I get up early in the mornings
just because I can’t sleep in the heat
I grab the vegetable strainer
go outside
to our little
10 foot wide, above ground, ring pool
I use the strainer as a skimmer
get all the dead begs
not so dead bugs
and other shit
floating on the top
then I turn on the pump
if the batteries have enough
charge in the them
from the solar panels
then get in with my handheld
pool vac
and suck all the sand and shit
off the bottom of the pool
all of this
so we can just sit in the pool
during the hottest part of the day
which lasts from 9am until 5 or 6
today though,
along with all the other dead creatures
was a big fat bloated dead fucking rat
this fucker was huge
I could barely get him in the
veggie strainer
once I did,
I walked him over to the fence
swung my arm back and let’er rip
something felt weird with the throw
I felt a drop of water hit my right shoulder
so I quickly jumped to the left
just as that bloated, soaked corpse
came crashing down
covering it in sand
the strainer wasn’t going to work
so I picked it up by the tail
the weight of the water logged dead thing
was too much and it fell out of my hand
leaving all the tail skin intact
in the palm of my hand
like a dirty used condom
I shook it off my hand
and grabbed what I should’ve grabbed
in the first place
a fucking shovel
I picked it up and
launched it over the fence
spent the rest of the day
doing a deep clean of the pool
vacuuming up all the rat shit
it’s body expelled
it was over 100 degrees today
and I was glad to be in the pool
