A (dead) fish tale

A little story for you:

Yesterday, we spent time at the lake enjoying the surf and the sun while celebrating the 4th.  We also took Neo.  Neo found a dead fish floating in the water and decided that it would make a good snack even though it was bloated and white and stinky.  Because I was busy enjoying my book in my beach chair, I told Shay, who was obviously not as busy as I, to remove the stinky, dead fish from the beach so that her dog would not die from eating it.  Shay went to look for a shovel to complete this task (isn’t she obedient?!) and not finding one, came back with a kitchen broom with a dust pan attached.  She attempted to use the attached dust pan as a shovel (while it was still attached).  Needless to say to those of us who have already assumed it, this didn’t work, and the dustpan snapped right off and the fish fell to the ground, losing one of it’s eyes.  While this fiasco was occurring, I was helpfully yelling at Shay to just pick up the smelly thing with the dustpan and dispose of it and she was gagging from the putridity. Finally, she succeeded at getting the disgustingness on to the dustpan and she took it about 100 yards away and threw it into the long grass, thinking she had “disposed” of it.  Obviously Shay had forgotten about our dog’s exceptional olfactory abilities, or she would have thrown the fish into the garbage dumpster where Neo couldn’t procure it.  But, because she didn’t think about this factor, Neo continued to smell around for his treat, and eventually ended up finding it just as I had almost fallen asleep on my floatie in the lake…and Shay was off tubing; how inconsiderate of him…and her. Anyway, after scolding my dog from my floating nirvana, I eventually decided to be the adult and get rid of the fish for good.  I made sure Neo knew that I was not happy about this unfortunate occurrence.  As I got out of the water and gagged at the very sight and smell of the fish, I decided that the dustpan was just not going to work, so I got a beach pail and kind of used the broom to sweep the fish into it, and then I carried it at arm’s length to the dumpster which was very far away, and which stunk even worse than the fish, and which is on gravel which hurt my bare feet, and I dumped it into the garbage where my dog could no longer find it.  And I felt very proud of myself for taking care of the very inconvenient, and very gross, and very stinky problem.

And I was very grown up.

And my dog didn’t die.

And I never want to do that again.

End of story.