One of my colleagues shared this week that they had an expensive bill for some septic issue.
For some reason, while we are in the middle of winter (albeit a rather up and down one) that reminded me of something that happened in the summer many years ago.
We were holidaying with the whole family (my parents and siblings) and had rented an RV that we were driving around B.C. and a little bit of Alberta. When we picked up the RV we had some muffins with us. My youngest brother wanted one but thought he’d get in trouble if he took one for some reason. So instead, he sneakily took a small nibble of each one as my parents were inside the office to sign the rental agreement. When everyone came out the small bag of muffins was sitting on the ground with little bites taken out. The theory for a while was that raccoons must have done it.
For three weeks we stopped at little campgrounds, enjoyed some campfires and marshmallows. My younger brother even tried sticking his hand down a gopher hole in order to try and catch one (unsurprisingly, even blocking some of the other holes with firewood didn’t get him very far).
Winter seems like an excellent time to reminisce about warm holidays, and as far as holidays go, I would say it was quite a good one.
However, it ended with a bit of a stink.
When we went to return the RV, we pulled into the large concrete parking lot.
We all went inside and my parents handed over the keys and the rental place took possession back. We were still inside when a bit of a scene seemed to be developing outside. One of the employees had pulled the plug on the RV’s septic system which was supposed to be empty. However, as it turned out, it hadn’t been hooked up previously and, as a result, wasn’t empty. Before we knew it the whole concrete parking lot was flooded with a brownish cocktail.
That scene stuck with me so strongly that often when someone mentions a septic system, that’s what I think of.