At Least the Mess Resides Outside My Gated Community

For three days, my morning walk to school has been made uncomfortable by two things: freezing wind and a gallon juice jug full of donkey droppings.

Given the proximity to Russia and the promise that our building will be heated until May, the face-numbing wind is expected. Sometimes I get little icicles on my eyelashes. It snowed yesterday. It's cold in Eerguna. I'm over it.

I'm even growing accustomed to the endless piles of donkey poop. And the fact that the tractor-turned-seemingly-reliable-automobiles seem like an upgrade from a miniature horse-pulled cart.

It's not advisable to walk with one's head held high in Eerguna--even after one's class of kindergartners just mastered "go to bed" and "good night." Pedestrians need always been on the look-out for piles of turds surely underfoot.

But what I really can't get over is the gallon jug full of donkey poop that has rested across the street from my gated community for three days.

First, how did it get in the jug? Did someone fix it to the donkey's behind and hope the jug caught it? Did one person actually take the time to spoon it all into that jug from the road?

Second, why? The other drivers all seem to leave the droppings where they lay. So why, in the middle of winter, is one guy trying to hold on to this crap? I could almost understand saving it during planting/growing seasons. Manure is useful in that capacity. But now's the season for ice and snow and those doesn't need fertilizer.

Third, and most importantly, if someone wanted those turds and made the effort to save them, why are they lying in a juice jug across the street from my house? Why leave that jug to get hit by a bike or stepped on by another donkey, thereby allowing a fiercer eruption of odor that the community must encounter daily? Why waste what must have been so painstakingly gathered?

I have a lot of unanswerable questions regarding Chinese small-town way of life. This, somehow, seems the most pressing. Regardless, I won't have to walk to school until Monday and I'm sure someone will find that jug of gold by then.