Natural History of Household Detritus

I was recently fortunate enough to become master of my own household
when my wife of twelve long years decided that she had had enough,
packed her bags and left, leaving behind her an enormous amount of
junk.

I applied myself to the immense task of clearing away from my living
space all those things that had been a source of annoyance to me.

The two main sources of annoyance were carrier bags and wire coat
hangers.

Hang on to your seats because I am about to let you in on a secret that
has been closely guarded by supermarkets and dry cleaners alike.

I have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that these seemingly mundane
articles have a life of their own.

My ex-wife would never throw them away. She would even bring home more
wire coat hangers to add to the mighty collection.

I started to throw them away but I made the mistake of keeping a few in
case of emergency. I have since learnt that there is no emergency worth
keeping wire coat hangers for.

Their only use is for lazy people to use as replacement car aerials.
There is also one major reason for not keeping them or carrier bags in
captivity, namely that they breed prolifically.

I first noticed this when I removed six of the seven bag fulls of
carrier bags from my larder. They were making it difficult to see if I
had any food left.

All was well for a few days, then I heard a rustling noise coming from
behind the closed larder door.

Thinking that a cat had got shut in I opened the door, only to witness
a sight that has only hitherto been seen by the staff at Tesco's secret
bag breeding facility, somewhere in the Midlands.

As well as the one carrier bag full of other bags there were now
several others lying on the floor. The original bag was still intact.
The new ones were a strange cross breed between Tesco and Sainsburys
bags. Their handles were weak and the bottoms were already showing
signs of splitting, a sure sign that they were already mature adult
bags ready to start breading. I calculated the complete breeding cycle
to be less than 24 hours, which I am sure you'll agree is
frightening.

Without more ado I pulled all the bags from the larder and started to
study them carefully.

I soon noticed that some of the bags, if left to their own devices
would slide across the table and attempt to mount others. In this way I
was able to identify the breeding pairs, sex them and then cruelly
separate them into strong, safe black dustbin liners. These I placed
outside for the dustbin men to collect and in this way narrowly avoided
a population explosion.

The wire coat hangers were a different sort of challenge. They had
several characteristics that made the job more of a challenge.

Firstly they are hermaphrodites. This was not apparent at first, I
discovered it when I found one bent into a very strange shape. I had
always thought that they only got bent this way after being installed
as car aerials, but I found one that had bent itself after I had placed
it in isolation. It had produced a small litter of poorly developed
wire paper clips which fortunately did not survive the birth.
Identifying the breeding pairs and separating them was no more
successful, unlike carrier bags which are monogamous, hangers will
breed freely with almost any other wire product. This can cause huge
colonies of wire to develop, which can be very difficult to untangle.
They are also masters of concealment. When I thought that I had
eradicated the last one from my spare bedroom I shut the door and went
out. Upon returning later that night I heard the clink of wire against
wire coming from the room. I looked in and saw a new pile of shiny
hangers on the floor next to an old suitcase. In the suitcase were
three that had escaped the purge. In a matter of five hours they had
produced between them over thirty offspring. I removed these from the
house in the same way as the bags and since then I have not been
troubled by them.

Down at the local tip the story goes on. There is now a colony of feral
coat hangers that has taken over a territory of nearly half an acre.
This is an area into which the council operatives fear to tread unless
in pairs armed with powerful magnets.