I don’t know what it is about me that makes me volunteer for odd jobs that make the average person squirm and narrowly avoid. I think I started doing it for the attention, but then ended up enjoying it with a distinctive, yet entirely odd passion. Around camp, the people who tell me what to do now know me as “the one who wants dirty jobs.” No, I’m not a practicing stripper. Instead, I’m the go-to person for cleaning bird poop off extremely large floating trampolines, or mucking out pig and cow stalls. I’m that person.
Sure, the first few times I totally volunteered. Who doesn’t want to drift lazily on the surface of a lake soaking up rays of sunshine that you’d have been missing if inside? I definitely don’t. So what if that sunshine also comes with thick heaps of bird turds that smell of rotting fish and wet feathers? So what. It’s all an experience.
After one night of heavy drinking I was placed on my first day of poop crew. Usually speaking, my drinking nights always end with me refreshed and peppy upon wakeup. Usually speaking. But even so, the idea of floating on a swirling raft covered in shit is not appealing to many individuals who woke up with that stale booze scent upon them, or those who have trouble finding their pants.
So, after multiple occasions scrubbing the Rave (lakefront trampoline), I began to entertain myself in different ways. It really isn’t a pleasant gig. You have to kneel in crunchy and painfully raised lumps of dried shit, scrubbing with a hard bristled brush and rinsing off the milky residue before it stains. There is a process to follow. Well, after falling off a car (long story), I have been nursing some scraped kneecaps for a few weeks and the shit just always finds a way deep inside the skin. If I don’t have the bird flu yet, I’m definitely immune. I’ve started amusing myself with rinsing the tidal wave of cloudy water, feathers, and fish bones off the Rave in the most flamboyantly fashionable way possible. Mostly, I just stagger around carrying a ten gallon bucket and try to casually rinse without losing my balance.
The other day though, I was sifting through a wonderful pile of treasure shit and found the ear bones of a small fish. I saved them in my hand for a while before I thought to myself, what on Earth are you doing girl? You already have a baggie of large ear bones from Alaska. Stop being a hoarder. I sent them off in a typhoon funeral and watched them swirl down in the lake. I’m either getting sun stroke or I’ve definitely lost some of my mind. No more sifting for me. Now I just scrub, scrub, scrub until the Rave gets presentable then I slide off into the water and try to get the dried blobs off of my skin.
But hell, I’m a pro at scrubbing doody. See what I did there? Doody = Duty, but poop version.
Sitka or Bust: Commute The World 