This morning I reminded Madeline, my neighbor, to “take turds to work” and then wondered if this was the first time anyone ever said that. I speculate about these things sometimes, like if I’m grilling lamb heart for lunch, I think about how far I might have to go to find someone else engaged in that activity at that very moment. Surely out of my village, but out of my state? Don’t know. Anyway, I liked thinking that the phrase was completely original and, of course, Mady understood what I was talking about because I’ve been bugging her about this for a couple of days now—asking her to take the droppings from the floor of the back porch to the vet where she works so they can identify the animal for us and we can figure out a way to get it/them to go elsewhere. The droppings are black and oval—too big for mice, and it doesn’t look like bat doo-doo to me, but then what would I know about bat doo-doo? Stanley, our handyman, says rats, but he’ll say anything to get us going. Marjorie, Mady’s mom, suggested it could be chipmunks, however they’d have to be crawling on the porch ceiling to make this kind of mess and we don’t know if chipmunks do that (this was after my dream). Mady, however, is so into animals she doesn’t even think it’s gross that this stuff everywhere.

Now if I were an enterprising art student, I’d be busy figuring out ways to incorporate this copious material from my everyday life into paintings or sculpture. Fortunately, I’m not.