4 Things I NEVER wanted to know . . .that our bears around here know all too well...

1. A half full dumpster is a meeting place for all the flies living in a five county area. 
2. The smell inside a dumpster is absolutely putrid. 
3. A dumpster is NOT a place you want to hang out for more than the amount of time it takes to throw your plastic garbage bag into it from 3 feet away. 
4. If you must throw trash into one, I learned NEVER, EVER look to see what is inside!!

I reluctantly learned these 4 things first hand yesterday because
I HAD to go dumpster diving. 

After I closed up the shop, on Friday night I threw our one small plastic bag of trash in the dumpster. Yesterday as I was looking around the store to see what I had to restock, I noticed we were low on felt purses. So, I go to our storeroom to find them. We had just bought 20 of them at market the week before so I knew that they couldn't have been buried too deep in the room. 

I search and search for them to no avail. I go back to the counter and it hits me! We had carried the felt purses home with us from market in a purple plastic bag. And last night I threw away a purple plastic bag that was under the counter thinking it was trash! OH NO! The purses were in the dumpster with my trash!! 

Okay...I had 2 choices... I could decide to just throw away 100s of dollars of purses and stay clean and smelling fresh for the day, or I could suck it up and dig them out of the dumpster??? Not really a choice, right? 

So, I went dumpster diving. (It brought me back to middle school days and the horror of accidentally throwing my retainer away in the lunchroom trashcan! UGH the agony of it!!). 

Looking inside the dumpster, I first check to make sure there were no bears in there. This task was bad enough, so I didn't want to make it worse by startling a hungry bear!  

I could see a mountain of garbage bags as well as rotting food scraps from the Vietnamese Restaurant, but no bears. I knew my small plastic bag was buried deep underneath all that putrid mess.  

I pulled as many trash bags over to the side as I could reach...leaning my head and stretching my hands into the stinky, disgusting dumpster. I couldn't see my bag. 

So I sheepishly sought out the manager of the shopping center to beg for his help. Sweetly, Dan agreed. He handed me a crowbar and he got a long metal pipe(so we could dig!) He stood at one sliding door of the dumpster and I at the other and we took our digging tools and got to work. Sweat mixed with stink and rotten food clung to our clothes, hair and skin. But, finally, after 15 minutes of pure torture, I found my little plastic garbage bag and the purple bag next to it. 

With jubilation in my voice I screamed, "I found it, Dan!!" and proceeded to pull the bag out with my crowbar from underneath several heavy bags of trash. The purple plastic bag was right there with the trash bag. But to both our dismays, the purple bag was flat, soaked in some kind of brown liquid and empty. NO PURSES!! We were both disappointed. Agony and perhaps a little bit of anger was on Dan's face. 

I thanked Dan profusely and went back to my shop with my head hanging low praying for a stiff breeze. How awful to go through hell and back and not even find the purses. 

Reeking with smells of fish and slop and who knows what else, I sat down to think. Then I remembered... we had stored other purses in a cabinet below their display, perhaps my sister put them there?? Opening up the cabinet I found them lying neatly in a pile. I was relieved.

I gave Dan one of the purses for his wife as a thank you for helping me. I imagine he wasn't too delighted with my gift.

Towards the end of the day, one customer, a tourist, was standing at the counter with her credit card, about to pay for one of those dang felted purses when she raised her prominent chin and rather pointed nose to the ceiling, took a big whiff and said to me, "Is there a horse barn nearby?" 

"No, no there is no horse barn around here." I answered as I swatted at a pesky fly that seemed to be circling my head. 

One last thing I learned . . . I made the wrong choice.
                   Marcee Corn is a best-selling multi-genre author of four books and short     stories.  Find all her books on Amazon or on her website: Marcee Corn Author website