There's A Corpse In My Front Yard

Mopping Blood And Scooping Brains:
Good Work If You Can Get It
by Rob Errera

There's something dead lying in the yard.
It's been there for the better part of a week, and the dogs get restless every time we walk by it. I can't really tell what it is - it might be a bird, it might be a squirrel. Whatever it was in life, it was doomed to become another unfortunate victim of Black Oak Ridge Road, where massive trucks fly along at near light speed. Whatever this creature had been in life it was roadkill now.
Because I'm an idiot, I wait until it's dark before I decide to dispose of the body. It's cold and windy, so I bundle up before venturing out armed with a flashlight, a plastic bag and a snow shovel. I'm sure there's some local agency I can call in the morning to handle the task, like the board of health or the animal control office, but I figure it's a small job and I'll do my part for the greater good of the community by taking care of this chore myself. I should have known better than to be a hero.
Standing above the corpse, flashlight resting on the lawn, casting weird, long shadows over the creature's bared-fang death grimace, its frozen black eye, I wonder if I'm truly up for the task. The horror of death isn't the dead body, it's the absence of life. The dead squirrel at my feet is just a husk, a reminder of the magnitude of life itself. Still, I'm pretty repulsed by it. I don't want to touch it, even with gloves and plastic bags covering my hands. It takes me twenty minutes to maneuver the corpse into a garbage bag using the tip of the snow shovel. I think the truckers barreling past slow to the speed of sound so they can get a good chuckle at the sight of me doing a jig on the front lawn with a dead squirrel, a plastic bag, and a snow shovel.
When the chore is done, I shower and settle in to read the Sunday paper. I come across a story about AAA Crime Scene Steam and Clean, a southern California business which is making a mint from doing the unthinkable: cleaning the gore and blood from crime scenes. The business was started by a woman who helped a friend clean up after her boyfriend's shotgun suicide. She figured it was a good way to make money and she was right. Now there are so many competing businesses that local authorities are requiring crime scene cleaners to register with the Department of Health Services and be trained in the removal of medical waste.
The article goes on to say that similar businesses are booming in Florida and several Midwestern states. I quickly see an opportunity here, in the untapped but ultra-violent environs of the Northeast. I cleaned up a crime scene today, albeit on a smaller scale. It was a hit and run, and the victim was terribly mutilated. This could be my calling - I could be my own boss, set my own hours and make gobs of money.
Then I think about the lifeless corpse of the squirrel and think better of it. I couldn't handle that on a larger scale. There is a reason why people who clean up crime scenes are paid lots of money - they deserve it. And next time I'm calling animal control.