Starbucks: Backyard Edition

My  parents have kept a compost heap in their backyard for the last ten years, which, along with recycling and smart consumerism, decreases their weekly trash to nearly nothing.

This year, my father and mother noticed a new side effect of their eocological lifestyle: the caffeination of local fauna. Coffee grounds are excellent compost and can be thrown in right with the filter. However much the garden would appreciate this earthy contribution, the grounds are not lasting more than a day before some creature visits for his fix. The culprit drags the plunder only a few feet before succumbing to the Java goodness, hoovering all the grounds and savaging the filter for any last bits.

I am not sure for what animal I should be looking.  Twitchy, hyperactive squirrel obsessive-compulsively searching the lawn square-inch by square-inch for every chunk of acorn? Attractively scruffy groundhog building and rebuilding piles of dirt one clod at a time, never quite satisfied? Frighteningly cheerful raccoon visiting every animal in the neighborhood with gifts of garbage pickings?

Maybe I will slip some sedatives in the next batch and find out...


Add a Comment