Toxic dump

Last summer, the old house next to us was investigated by the city's health official. The found a massively horrifying situation where three men and a woman where living in the worst kind of squalor.

No refrigerator, no working toilet (just a wooden book with a hoe cut in the top, piles of garbage, refuse, newspapaer... and more than 30 cats -- all sick, with no obvious food source and no kitty litter, which meant the place was coated in cat piss and shit. The smell was unbeleivable, and the cats (so I was told) were likely to be all put down because they were simply too ill.

The fols that were home were all carted off to the hospital in terrible health.

A month or two ago, the city shut down the house completely -- nailing the doors shut and posting a notice on the door.

Yesterday, cleanup crews arrives. Two very large trucks, and about six or seven guys dressed in white plastic coveralls. The all had filter masks on their faces.

Everything went into the trucks, presumably for the dump, including a number of very uggy-looking '70s televisions and more newspaper than you can imagine.

And a pile of hockey sticks. About six.

Keep in mind, these dudes were old, and in very ill health.

Worse still was the the garbage guys decided to leave the sticks on the front yard should anyone be interested in taking them.

Someone picked them up, and it was all I could to not throw open our windows and shout, "Don't touch it - it's evil!" (A little Time Bandits reference for you '80s film fans -- incidentally, that part of the movie creeped me out for years, although keep in mind that I couldn't have been more than seven years old at the time).

The only way I would have accepted anything from that house is if it were $100 bills, and I could hold them at arm's length with tongs until they could be properly sterilized. And even then, I would immediately take them to the bank and get them off my person as soon as possible.

Ugh.

Those poor, sad, unhealthy old men.