When I was a kid, we had every sort of animal you can possibly imagine.
We always used to joke that our house was more like a zoo than a typical suburban home. At one time, we had five cats, three dogs, a rabbit, reptiles, birds, hamsters, and god knows what else. We also had to contend with all of these losses when the time came, which was less whimsical. That’s how we wound up with a viable graveyard on our property over the years. It was creepy, but nice to stay so close to all our best friends. Well, as an adult I have something similar going on these days, except it’s the remains of my long lost home appliances that populate my backyard. I guess I never knew what to do with broken down toasters, dishwashers, and AC units, and somehow all the cleaning machinery and temperature control equipment wound up being a giant landscape fixture over time. I look out back and see my old furnace, no longer pumping out hot air, but still collecting warmth from the pounding sun. A family of singing birds lives inside of the front panel of the heater, enjoying the convectional heat. Moving west, there’s my ancient dehumidifier from college. I used to live in a basement, and had to use the air quality machinery to remove all the excess moisture from the air before I developed mildew in my bed again. Next, you see the prehistoric window AC unit from my first home. It housed a family of mice back in the day, and spread their feces all over my house while pumping out cool air. I sure like to think that the same family of mice has lived in the old AC all this time, producing new generations of cool critters and bringing new life to my graveyard.