At the stroke of 7 AM, as was her custom, OH thrust her door open and stepped outside, inhaling briskly.
"Ah, smell that fresh country air."
A few feet away, a sheep looked up placidly and belched. Doing her part to reduce greenhouse gases, OH had fired the lad who mowed her lawn and replaced him with a herd of sheep.
"Best choice I ever made", OH said, beaming at the wooly faces turned in her direction. The ruminating herd fertilized the grass as they ate, a benefit that pleased OH to no end. She carefully picked her way to an as yet unfertilized patch of grass and began her morning calisthenics. As she bent at the waist, straightened and swiveled to the side, OH chanted, in time to her movements, an ode to manure:
"Man-u-ray, hey! Oh man-u-ray!"
She had nearly finished her routine when Henny Fargo's door banged open and her neighbor stormed across the lawn, her bathrobe flapping wildly.
"What on earth are these--these--"
"Sheep", OH supplied.
"I know what they are, thank you very much!" Henny snapped.
"You're welcome," OH replied. She was happy to be getting along so well with her neighbors.
"What are these eating machines doing here!?"
OH began explaining to Henny how much better for the environment were sheep than gas powered lawn mowers, going into great detail regarding statistics, even drawing a pie chart midair, but Henny interrupted her.
"What I WANT to KNOW is, HOW you are going to keep these THINGS from coming into MY yard and eating my FLOWER GARDEN!?"
After reflecting for a moment that Henny must have an inner ear infection that was affecting her hearing, OH shouted as loudly as she could:
"THAT'S WHAT THESE ARE FOR!" and tossed Henny one of the sheep's electric collars.
Unfortunately for Henny she was standing on the line between her and OH's lawns. Upon receiving the signal, the collar in her hand responded with a tooth rattling shock. Flying out of her slippers, OH's neighbor jumped frantically up and down, yowling like a scalded cat. This violent motion sent her pink curlers popping off her head and as they rained down around her, Henny spat a stream of imprecations at OH.
Of the mostly incoherent diatribe regarding OH's sanity and necessity of a straight jacket, Our Heroine heard only "jacket."
"OOH, YELLOW JACKET GOT YA, EH? THAT CAN BE NASTY. I RECOMMEND APPLYING CRUSHED PLANTAIN LEAVES TO THE AREA."
After delivering this advice, OH made the sign of the cross over the distressed woman.
"Peace be with you" she said.
"And also with you" Henny moaned, responding automatically. Half a second later, the realization that she had blessed her nemesis sent her into another fit of fury, but OH was already bounding toward her front door, sheep scattering fore and aft.
On the way to the office, OH stopped Fergie at the end of her street. She had noticed that the Togue's hydrangea bushes were looking stunted and although she was not well acquainted with the Togues, OH was always willing to help a fellow gardener. Depositing a bag of camel manure in their mailbox, she glanced at the house and was relieved not to see any movement. OH humbly preferred her good deeds to go unrecognized and unreturned.
"Giddap," she told Fergie, and they clopped away at a quick pace.
Later that day, OH pushed a stack of papers away and leaned back in her ergonomic office chair with a sigh of contentment.
"Bureaucracy isn't fun but someone has to do it", she said, though deep down she did enjoy a bit of red tape now and then.
She propped her feet up on a low filing cabinet and surveyed her new office with satisfaction. The space was actually a cubicle separated from the main office of the town hall by a full sized divider. OH did not consider this arrangement satisfactory, as she could hear the town clerk talking or worse, hear the baby she sometimes brought to the office.
To reduce these noises Our Heroine wore a pair of bright orange construction-grade earmuffs as she worked.
Having removed the muffs to listen to voice messages, she caught the clerk's side of a phone conversation.
"Hello, town offices, this is Irveen....You've got what?...Moose droppings in your mailbox? Ugh, that's a new one...Yeah, you're gonna want to call the police, this is the town hall...You're welcome, buh-bye."
Hearing this, a shadow of a thought entered OH's mind and floated around like a spaceship searching for its landing dock, but before it could make contact, Irveen's baby generated a higher decibel shriek than a group of howler monkeys. OH dove under her ear protection once more.
As she did so, OH missed a second phone call that the clerk took, this one more frantic than the first, and she missed this explanation which Irveen hollered at her:
"Jim-Bobby fell off the slide and they took him to the ER. Please watch the baby for me while I'm gone, I'll have my mom pick her up."
All OH knew was that a sodden lump of child was flying through the air at her and its mother was fast disappearing through the door.
"Wait!" she croaked, stumbling to her feet, but when she got to the parking lot Irveen's car was roaring down the road. Sighing, she went back to the office carrying the baby.
"It looks as if your mother has forgotten you. Don't take it personally, anyone might make that mistake. Anyone with a baby, that is." She put the baby down in its playpen.
"She'll probably remember you a few miles down the road and turn around."
OH went back to her office and sat down, but was soon aware of a wailing noise penetrating her earmuffs. Fire drill, she thought, and removed her muffs to be sure. The surprisingly loud noise came from the playpen, not the alarm on the wall.
"By Cuspid! What the blue heck are you screaming for? If you want something, just ask." OH listened for a moment but couldn't make any sense of the racket.
"Apparently I do not understand your language. You'll have to act out what you're trying to say." The baby raised its arms.
"You want to get out of there, is that it?" OH hoisted the child out, and drawing a chair over to her desk, placed the child in it. As soon as she took her hands away it slumped to one side as if it would fall over.
"Whoa, there, Bessie! Looks like you've got a little balance problem, eh? Let's see here..." and she began searching for books with which to prop the child up. The little thing began to wail again. OH glared at it, gritting her teeth.
"You'd better hope there's a patron saint of soggy bottomed brats..." she muttered. Suddenly she snapped her fingers.
"I know, you'd like to see my work, wouldn't you? Right, over on this side of the desk we have files of past litter perp---" OH broke off.
"No offense, but you're a bit on the small side, aren't you? I'll have to give you a boost" and she sat down at her desk with the child on her lap. It stopped crying immediately.
"I knew it! You're really going to enjoy this" OH crowed. "Now this folder contains some very interesting material..." and she began explaining differences between bio-degradable and non-biodegradable litter, life spans of the most common trash and different classifications of recyclables.
OH educated her pupil on the basics of litter detecting for the better part of an hour. One of her exhibits yielded a piece of rubber that the child put in its mouth and sucked on. OH found this behavior somewhat disturbing but broad-mindedly decided not to comment.
Declaring that it was test time, OH put two objects before the child.
"Now class, which piece of litter will degrade faster: the cigar butt or the beer can?"
"Bre-gaat!" the child burbled, slapping her hand on the cigar butt side of the desk. OH beamed.
A grey haired woman appeared, peering around the corner of the divider.
"Hello, I'm Irveen's mother. I've come to pick up Dahlia." The baby held her arms out to her grandmother and chirped.
"Thank you very much for watching her" the woman said, turning to go.
"Madame", OH began. Something, possibly indigestion, was making it difficult for her to speak. She thumped her chest and cleared her throat.
"Madame, it is my opinion that some day that child will be a first class litter investigator."
