mending wall

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

Mending Wall
Robert Frost

My back yard looks as if children rehearsing for Mardi Gras have paraded across my lawn. There are shreds of paper of various size. Not the uniform deadly massacre of a lawn mower when it meets its mortal enemy. No. This paper has been meticulously -- purposely shredded, as if for some secondary school art project.

But the hands that created this artistic detritus do not belong to children -- unless they are the children of Chip and Dale. The budding sculptors are gray squirrels. The chewers of BMW wire insulation.

The squirrels are busy constructing their little Levittowns. But they are not very good at their tasks. Plenty of nest-building material snows from the Spruce tree in my back yard. Now and then a clump of twigs the size of a basketball hurtles from the tree. I keep wondering if the Squirrel News headlines will feature the loss of home and possessions. But apparently no loss of life. The nascent nests are as devoid of squirrelettes as they are of ever being a happy home.

The newspaper scraps have a source, though. The lady who lives next to me stacks her leftover newspaper on her back porch. To the squirrels, it is a Home Depot. And I could probably put an end to the confetti in my yard by asking her to do something with the paper.

But the paper is not the problem. Lack of money is. She does not recycle the newspaper because she needs it to burn in her fireplace for heat. Besides, she cannot afford to have her garbage picked up because she has no money for that. Some nights, while I am in the hot tub, I can smell that she is burning plastic in her fireplace -- putting her life at risk to avoid the cold.

My choices are limited. I can confront her and she would ashamedly move the newspaper and stop burning some of the plastic. But I was reminded tonight of a lesson I learned from another of my neighbors -- Bill. And I got thinking what he would do as a good neighbor, and the answer came to me. It was simplicity itself. I have plenty of extra space in my trash can. If she will simply bag up her plastics and other garbage, I can put it in my can. It costs me nothing more and she will not be tempted to burn her plastics. I also have a pile of older wood that I am not going to use. I can give that to her. As for the newspaper, I have several old brass boxes that I am not taking to Mexico. She could store her newspapers there.

I need to talk with her this evening. I am not trying to toot my own horn. In fact, I am a bit ashamed that I did not think of such an obvious solution to being a better neighbor.

But, it is another good example of how good deeds get paid forward. If Bill had not shown his kindness to me, I might still be shaking my fist at the squirrels across the wall.