Giveaways on my Doorstep

That's the first time I ever saw a scavenger take entire garbage bags from a trash can.  (Usually, they're looking for just aluminum cans.)

I was being sneaky.  I decided (since I have to move, since I hadn't thrown them out yet, and since I had come across a large, really heavy duty trash bag) that I would take my old work shoes and exercise sneakers (complete with boxes) and throw them away in one of the polycarts sitting in front of the vacated house across the street.  After all, there already were plenty of trash bags on the ground around them, so what's one more?

Mind you, I did it when I got back from my daily walk, when it was still dark enough and early enough that no one would be around to see me put my trash in front of someone else's property.  It was just as well I did it yesterday, too, since it's pouring rain this morning, and since it appears I have a new downstairs neighbor who left at 6:00 this morning.  I mean, who gets up that early?  (Besides me, of course.)

So, I put the five shoeboxes into the trash bag and placed it into one of the polycarts.  Since it was Monday and since trash day isn't until Friday, I figured that the landlord would come back to put the other trash bags into the polycarts and not notice the extra one already in there, or I'd be nice on Thursday night and do it for him, and then he wouldn't notice my bag at all.  I didn't figure on the guy who drove up (with his kids, since day care costs money, which he doesn't have, which is why he's scavenging) and pulled my bag from the polycart and placed it into the back of his minivan almost immediately.  (The bag did have a generous tear in it, so I figure that he immediately saw it was shoes and might be useable or worth something.)  He tore holes in the bags on the ground and took just one of them (which, by the look of it, was very heavy).

I didn't donate my work shoes or sneakers at any thrift store because I had worn them pretty well out and figured no one else would want them.  Maybe I figured wrong.  Maybe this guy is so bad off that even worn out shoes are better than nothing.  Maybe he'll get them home, see they're in such poor condition, and throw them away anyway.  Either way, I did get a little zing of pleasure that I wasn't sending something potentially useful to the landfill.

Now, anybody want the stray cat that has been hanging around my apartment all summer?