Postcards from New Zealand: Day Sixty-Five

A week ago, we caught a little mouse hanging out in our trash bag. We tied that trash bag up and put it in the rubbish bin outside. Today, I realized that not only was the rubbish bin full and stinky, but it was unlined by a big bag. Here, the rubbish truck will only pick up your rubbish if it is in a special gray bag, which is provided at the cost of $2 per bag (this is quite brilliant, as people are thus less wasteful). In any case, I had to transfer the little plastic baggies of trash piled in our bin into one of these gray bags. As I got to the bottom, I remembered the mouse bag, because there was a soggy sack of liquefied brown, seething with tiny, blind white worms. I thought about waiting for my man to come home to take care of it, but after much vacillation, I wrapped each of my hands in more plastic bags, put the lid on the trash can, turned the can upside down and then lifted it, and plucked the nasty bag up off the lid and flicked it into the gray bag, tying that sucker up. Then I washed everything, including me.