Frolicking in the Mist

It’s 12:30 in the morning, sprinkling rain, and I’m pedaling my bicycle into the driveway, one hand on the handlebar and the other holding a three-foot-tall, stuffed green dragon with a yellow belly and blue horns.

My wife sees me and laughs. As well she might: this is all her doing

Kayne is a practiced scavenger, often coming home with things that had been set out for the garbage collectors. I had always mildly discouraged her. But she argued that she was being environmentally conscious, helping keep landfills unclogged.

It all struck me a little like rummaging through a city dump after dark. Still, I seemed to recall reading somewhere that an item clearly intended to be thrown away can’t be stolen.

So one morning about 1:30 I agreed to accompany her to check out two bar stools she had seen. They weren’t exactly what I might buy, perhaps, but close enough, at a much lower price. I scooped up both, and started walking furtively home.

Then I noticed a weight bench in another yard. Again, not as good as one I would consider buying, but better than the nothing I had. And another bargain. My wife took one of the stools, I picked up the bench, and we continued on, hoping very much not to be seen.

That’s how it started for me.

Mondays and Thursdays are trash days in our neighborhood, which means Sundays and Wednesdays are now treasure nights. My work schedule already has me walking home from the train station after midnight, so I don’t have to make special efforts to be up when others are asleep. All I have to do is cast a different eye on what I used to consider refuse.

I see a board roughly the size of a door, with two holes cut in it, and think, What can I use that for?

Nothing, I decide. But that small aquarium - surely it could be turned into a terrarium. Those random-length two-by-fours - firewood? I hate those stackable, white plastic lawn chairs, but...

I soon realized that walking allowed only a limited coverage area. What if tonight the big score is not on this street, but one block over?

That’s when I turned to the bicycle, and, my first night on wheels, someone several blocks over had thrown out what appeared to be a perfectly good pedestal fan. I managed to get it home, only to plug it in and learn that, while having fan looks, it lacked fan action. It quickly went to the trash in front of my house.

My wife brought home a metal shoe rack that night. This would be shoe-holder No. 6 or so for the household, but I no longer begrudge her.

Instead, I look forward to the next treasure night, when I will again sniff through the discards like one of the neighborhood cats. In this manner we’ve cluttered the garage with some items -- a door, a wooden fence gate, an animal cage, assorted screens and shutters and tables and chairs -- whose usefulness has not yet become apparent.

But we’ve had our successes, too, in addition to the stools and weight bench. There’s the wine rack now holding magazines in the dining room. The two excellent ice chests, now protecting bird seed. The sisal rug in the basement, the wicker love seat in the bedroom, the metal cabinet in the pantry.

And, on one rainy night, a stuffed green dragon. In need of rescue.