Of Ice and Illegal Birds

I was just talking to someone about bags of ice cubes when I had a thought, if they all melted could you return them to the store for a refund? Anyway, every Labor day, at the end of the summer, we have what we call office appreciation day and have a big picnic for the office staff and a few clients. It is traditionally lobster or steak and veggie burgers for my kids who are vegetarians and vegans. It use to be held at my house in the back yard and there were the requisite number bags of ice for cooling things and putting in drinks and what not. At the end of the day one year there were three bags of ice left so I put them in the morgue.

The morgue, you must understand is the freezer out in the garage. It is called the morgue because it was purchased originally for the keeping of all manner of legal and illegal dead critters to be used for who knows what purpose. Weaselboy has always been well into animals and birds especially. In fact he has been banding birds down at the Rachel Carson preserve for more than ten years now. He knows a lot, that boy.

So, one day a good family friend who moved his family off to New York to run a drug rehab center was driving on his daily commute when a great horned owl, clearly knowing Bruce was a doctor who worked with depressed and addicted people, and having some sort of bird depression himself decided to ask Bruce some questions. Apparently the bird depression affected him more than he realized and instead of coming up to the window to enquire of Bruce's professional opinion he misjudged and flew into the grill of the car dying instantly. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the bird was beyond talking and was taking action and meant to kill himself but the fact that it was Bruce and what he does, I just tend to think the best of the Great Horned Owls and think he was reaching out for help. Or maybe it was just an accident. I have several other theories but I won't go into them here.

Anyway the whole point is Bruce, of course, out of concern for all Great Horned Owls and other assorted creatures stopped immediately to assess the situation. The assessment was: dead bird. The ever quick witted and resourceful Bruce then realized that a dead Great Horned Own could further the interests of people in great horned owly things by being stuffed and shown around in an educational setting. Bruce immediate thought of Weaselboy who at still a young and tender age showed great interest in these things.

To make what was really quite a short story but has run way to long, said Bruce (who, because of this next bit, I am now going to throw doubt about his real name, into the mix because there is a certain aura of law breaking about to happen) cleverly wrapped the late Great Horned Own in appropriate materials and eventually got the Saran and paper entombed carcass to Weaselboy in Falmouth. Well Weaselboy's mother was not going to have the entombed remains of the Great Horned in with the frozen veggies, pizzas and ice cream so I went and purchased and christened the morgue.

The Great Horned was followed by an abundance of other critters that were meant for any number of purposes. There was a baby fox whose pelt would no doubt be one day lovingly handled by someone who never saw the pelt making process, several other avian creatures acquired in a number of interesting but deadly circumstances, the odd pet, a chicken for dissection (Weaselboy and Girlface and some 4Hers made an incredible website on the development of chicken eggs once. It was stunning. I'll see it I can get the link) and various other critters and the overflow of my Ice Cream stash. Now I had to throw the doubt about Bruce's name because mere possession of a single feather of any song bird or migratory bird or bird of prey is yes, A FEDERAL CRIME, so imagine what the punishment for possesing an entire body would have been. We are, no doubt, talking The Big House. Come to think of it some of those little avian friends would also, no doubt, be additional violations.

However being in education (down at the conservancy) and a studiously minded lad, the idea was to apply for a licensee to have and stuff the big guy so it would all be copasetic. That was the plan anyway. There was also the plan to reduce one of the squirrels to his bone structure and reassemble the skeleton for show. There were several skulls to harvest for my skull collection and lots other work to be done.

None of it was to be in the end, however, because of the raid. No, no, no, there was no raid. But there was a show in the infamous googleable Bike Barn. Some hard core rockin’ was goin on when they blew a fuse. To rectify the situation they took some power off another circuit with power cords from the garage, yes the said same garage housing the morgue. They blew another fuse and removed the power cord to yet another outlet and continued their hard core rockin until the were either done or the coppers came and shut them down whichever it was that night.

About a week or so later I was in the garage looking for who knows what when I smelled this fowl odor. I say fowl instead of foul because it was, in fact, a foul fowl odor. The fuse that had been blown connected to the morgue and all the creatures, great and small were now, each one in their own way, rotting. The solution of course, was to reactivate the morgue's circuit, refreeze the menagerie and dispose of the carcasses after they had been refrozen so as no to deal with rotting flesh and gagging smells and all. Well it was a good idea in theory, except everything froze solid to the shelves and sides of the morgue and another unfreezing event was required for eviction. This time, at least, it was controlled. Suffice it to say, however, I now have an illegal Great Horned Own skull in my collection. Or does Bruce have it?

However I digress. Sadly, yes it does happen. This discussion was about ice cubes. Well the morgue is (supposedly) a frost free mechanism. That means that it actually warms up to a certain point to where the frost evaporates and is therefore removed and the frozen bits still stay frozen. I had checked and was told it was sufficient of morgue purposes. At the end of D& P Appreciation day the three left over bags of ice were relegated to the second shelf of the morgue until such time as their services were needed.

Having an ice maker in the kitchen refrigerator/freezer side-by-side faux stainless steel unit left by the former owners I didn't have cause for an entire bag of ice cubes until some many months later, the event I no longer recall, but I said to myself, "Aha!" or words to that effect and went to the morgue for the left over ice cubes. Yes, the three bags were there, unopened and but, alas, empty. The so called no frost mechanism is no friend to ice cubes.

Is there nothing permanent in life?