What good comes of it

25% nitrogen and 75% carbon is the recommended ratio for a compost pile to do its thing, which is cook. That and a lot of air. I suppose that includes carbon-based life forms, although leftover meat products are not suggested if one lives in the city. Attracts rats.

Speaking of rodents and compost (for this is the direction I intend), the pocket gopher body count continues to rise and they in turn are (yes) turned in with the grass clippings and mule shit. All but one, anyway, which was placed elsewhere in an act of generosity toward the vultures.

If only they had taken me up on the offer, one repeated time and again over the years without any (yes) takers. Instead, the dog found what remains (yes'd) the following morning, wife in tow, and I was called in to identify. I feigned and together we took the head and front limbs to the steaming heap.

We are not quite at the proper proportions for complete and timely decomposition, and there is a lot of dead grass molding that, when disturbed, mimics the difference in temperature between air and source. It is wise to be upwind, lest I find myself on the couch soon thereafter... Where am I going with this?

There are many more gophers to trap, times left to mow the lawn before the rains return and barrows of dung to shovel. By next spring the compost will be ready for the garden. Ah, beauty!

But we are not there yet. And I have not taken into account that a deer or two will be hit on the road and included.

There we go. Now I can proceed.

A lot of killing. For instance, the weeds out front on a hot day, the backpack sprayer heavy yet cool against my back, headphones on, so I keep an eye to the asphalt byway, knowing that my mother would not do well with two sons so departed. But it's there, like a fear of heights or cougars when taking the dog out at night for a final piss. There is lingering fear or doubt, I'm not sure which, that I'd jump if it was left up to someone else or leave the dog and go for a gun, assuming, of course, the dog would do the same for me.

Or folding laundry on our bed at midnight when I hear muffled voices outside:

"Shoot him!"

"Man, I can't! He's folding laundry for crissake!"

A tussle. "Gimme the fuckin' thing! I'll do it!"

I'd hit the deck, if needed.

Yes, I suppose I could have set that last scene up to make it seem like it actually happened, but then by the time I have the big cat catching me with my dick out while the dog and I take a piss together on the lawn, you'd know that I am just battling routine duties with a curious narcissism.

I wouldn't mind being composted when the time comes. Save the skull. The skull, mind you, not mine anymore, with its flat back I'd rather not have.

And, yes, it's a bit cliché, but you have to start somewhere, and tried-and-true will do nicely: I sit here with that skull in my hand while I think about lessons from nature, in particular the recycle, because everything that comes before that last moment so that others may continue makes for nice analogies, but lacks a degree of consciousness beyond survival, because, you know, even though birds sing, they can't read.

But, I suppose, dominion over allows for a certain anthropomorphism. It's our gentler side.