Vomit

Skylar found vomit in our backyard.

Actually, Duncan found it first. We noticed that Duncan had taken an extreme interest in one corner next to a climbing rose bush. A big snowstorm had come through, dropping more than a foot of powder. Duncan spent a few days frantically digging through that snow at that spot for reasons that were unknown to us.

We kept wondering what was going on, assuming that maybe one of his toys was back there. Then I came home from work a few days ago to confrontation.

"Did you vomit in the backyard?"

He said it more like an accusation than a question. Like I was in trouble. And I immediately became defensive, so defensive in fact that I probably looked more guilty because of it.

Then I paused, reminding myself that if I vomited in the yard I wouldn't be ashamed of it, and I would have probably written about it on the internet by now, so to whatever extent Skylar was accusing me of something, the shame projection was misguided.

Skylar apologized, "but to be fair" he did remind me that I have a history of vomiting in the backyard. It happened last summer, in fact. Skylar had made lamb chops for dinner and I ate too much of them. I had taken Duncan outside to do his businesses when I suddenly started thinking about how barbaric it is that we rip meat off of bones with our teeth and the next thing I knew, I was projectile vomiting into our raspberry bush.

Relax. The harvest was already over for the year.

The raspberry bush became Duncan's favorite part of the yard for the next few months because, and I'm just gonna say, dogs are disgusting.

But this time it wasn't me. I reminded Skylar that when I threw up into the raspberry bush, I immediately ran into the house to tell him about it, so why would I keep this newest incident a secret?

As he acknowledged that I was probably right about this like I am about everything, he gasped, and said "Eli! This means someone broke into our backyard to vomit!"

I had to admit that that had to be one of the weirdest reasons for trespass, so weird in fact that I couldn't imagine that it could be true. I suggested that maybe it was an animal, but Skylar shot that down, telling me that "this is for sure human vomit. I know what human vomit looks like and this is human. vomit."

He seemed pretty confident and I wasn't interested in a detailed explanation so I moved on.

We finally settled on the vagrant being a college student. Over our back fence are college dorms. When I bought the place I was a little nervous that this neighbor situation could get annoying fast, but other than catching the occasional youttthhhh jumping over the wall to cut through my yard to get to and from school, we never hear a peep from those people.

A college student vomited, human vomit, in our yard.

To be honest, the whole thing is as exciting as it is disgusting. I went to BYU, so I never had the college drunken party experience. I sort of feel like I'm living an alternative life now. It makes me feel young again, and sort of in the mood to read a chemistry book and not understand it.

I am so going to go play hacky sack in the quad tomorrow afternoon.

My disgusting dog.

~It Just Gets Stranger