When I was a kid, we had every sort of pet you can possibly imagine, and my pal and I always used to joke that our condo was more like a zoo than a proper suburban home, and at one time, we had five cats, three dogs, a rabbit, reptiles, pigeons, hamsters, and god knows what else.
My pal and I 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 condo over the years. It was creepy, but nice to stay so close to all our best friends, and well, as an adult I have something similar going on these afternoons, except it’s the remains of my long lost cabin appliances that populate my backyard. I believe I never knew what to do with broken down toasters, dishwashers, and AC units, and somehow all the cleaning machinery and temperature control device wound up being a large landscape fixture over time. I look out back and see my seasoned boiler, no longer pumping out sizzling air, but still collecting warmth from the pounding sun. A family of singing pigeons lives inside of the front panel of the heater, enjoying the convectional heat. Moving west, there’s my seasoned 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 device from my first home. It housed a family of mice back in the day, and spread their feces all over my condo while pumping out cool air. I sure like to believe that the same family of mice has lived in the seasoned AC all this time, producing current generations of cool critters and bringing current life to my graveyard.