Column by Hal Walter
Rural Life – August 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
IT WAS FAIRLY SIMPLE to conclude that my neighbor’s trash Dumpster had arrived about 30 feet across the road from its usual location at the behest of a bear. The crumpled metal box was on its side and seriously damaged, some of its contents were piled next to it.
The only logical explanation was a bear, but the entire scene struck me as odd. For one thing, since I had driven away at about 2 p.m. and it was now about 7 p.m., this had to have happened during daylight hours. For another, bears aren’t stupid; why waste the energy to pick up and move a Dumpster so far when all you really want is the garbage inside? I don’t know what a Dumpster weighs but this took some doing. Seems like it would be easier to just tear it apart where it sat.
Thoughts of an insane, rampaging bear filled my head as I sped over the little hill to my driveway to see what damage had been done at my place. If this was what a bear did to a Dumpster, then a front door or window, or, truly, a wall, was no real deterrent. As I pulled up to my house, everything was in place and peaceful. Apparently we had escaped the wrath of this mad bear.
I called the neighbors and left word on their answering machine. Then I also placed a couple of calls to other neighbors just to give them a heads up. Then I loaded the Marlin.
About 9:30 that evening the Dumpster’s owner called. The conversation went something like this.
Well, Hal, it wasn’t a bear that did it.
Huh?
Did you look on the road for tracks or drag marks?
Uh, no.
That Dumpster never touched the ground. I paced it off and it flew 30 feet.
You mean the bear threw the Dumpster 30 feet?
No, a microburst threw it 30 feet.
A further explanation revealed that there was absolutely no indication that the Dumpster had ever touched the ground until impact. There were no bear tracks. The garbage next to the crumpled metal box had not been rummaged through or eaten. Clearly this Dumpster flew.
Still I wonder if the term microburst is correct. The best definition I could find is a downburst less than 2.5 miles in diameter. The size of this weather event seems to fit, since none of the surrounding trees were damaged. However, it seems more like this Dumpster was lifted from the ground, implying an upburst rather than a downburst. My best guess is a giant dust devil, a common weather phenomenon is this area. In fact, I have seen these mini-twisters reach hundreds of feet in height from the Wet Mountain Valley floor.
DUMPSTERS ASIDE, there’s something in the air. Years ago when I first moved here with the idea of trying to extract a living by turning such resources as decomposed granite, locoweed, and extreme weather into words that I could sell, it became extremely annoying to have to drive the 15 miles or so to Westcliffe to check the mail and see if any of the magazines to whom I was selling these words had bothered to actually pay for them. Usually a one-hour U-turn and a couple gallons of gasoline were wasted in frustration. Instead of changing careers, it occurred to me that what I really needed was mail delivery. I called the post office to inquire and was told that they actually wanted to expand the route but needed a petition of residents in order to add mileage to it.
The next thing I knew I was braving vicious dogs and grumpy neighbors to get the required signatures to put up mailboxes. This was in the early 1990s before the building boom and influx of trophy-homers, so there really wasn’t a very big pool of potential mail recipients. One neighbor actually told me he didn’t want mail delivery out here because the highlight of his day was driving to the post office to get the mail.
Before trash service became available in this area, the problem of garbage was very serious. Household garbage is produced on a daily basis and storing it becomes problematic, especially in bear country. Leave it outside and you have bears. Put it in your garage and you have mice and rats, not to mention a stinky garage.
Initially, the Custer County dump was just outside downtown Westcliffe. So a person could go to town every few days to pick up the mail, groceries, and avoid a garbage build-up at home. However, when the landfill was relocated several miles southeast of town over on Rosita Road, the landfill became more like a 40-mile round trip. Plus there was the additional expense in gasoline, time and dump fees.
Like Mark Twain with a telephone, when trash service became available I had to be one of the first people in the neighborhood to have a Dumpster. I put together a group of four neighbors and we all went in on the Dumpster and split the bill. This worked out fairly well, and was far less expensive than driving to the dump and paying the fee. However, the Dumpster was a little on the full side when the trash truck finally made its pickup every other week.
I think partly because of the overflowing Dumpster, eventually our little garbage consortium split up. One neighbor went in with another neighbor and got her own, and two of the original partners decided to share one Dumpster. We were left with our own personal and spacious landfill on wheels right at our property.
SOON OTHER NEIGHBORS built homes and began to move into the area. With them came more Dumpsters. Some neighbors went to great lengths to beautify the metal boxes with wooden fences. Occasionally these barriers are torn apart by bears intent on getting to the garbage.
I’ve left my red trash bin out in the open for all the world to see. Over the years we’ve had bears knock the Dumpster over, and even bend the corners of the lids back to get inside. One morning I found each corner bent up and an assortment of trash items set on the top. The bear had reached inside and pulled things out in an effort to find something to eat, thoughtfully setting aside those things he or she was not interested in.
It’s a no-brainer that trash Dumpsters are a bad thing for bears. But some of us — actually a lot of us — have made the decision, right or wrong, to share living space with these animals and other wildlife. People produce trash. Lots of it. It’s not cost- or energy-effective to drive the trash to the landfill every day or even every other day. I look at my trash Dumpster as a necessary evil. And I have to admit that I do enjoy the convenience of just walking the trash to the bin whenever I please.
I was certainly glad to learn that a strange weather phenomenon rather than a rampaging bear was responsible for the destruction of my neighbor’s Dumpster. But I’m also keen to the idea that next time it could be a bear, and it could be my Dumpster.
In the meantime, now that I know trash Dumpsters really can fly, I’ll keep a more careful watch for whirlwinds. If they can pick up and toss big metal boxes, there’s no telling what else can fly.
Hal Walter writes from the Wet Mountains.
