Portapotty Capers

Location, location, location. 

This porta potty, rented by the Princeton recreation department, leads a humble but much appreciated existence at the bottom of the Herrontown Woods parking lot, ready whenever nature calls.

We almost lost it yesterday, though. While I was pulling stiltgrass, over across the creek from the Barden, I heard a big truck lumber into the parking lot to service the portapotty. No big deal. This happens every week. 

But then a half hour later, another big truck showed up. As I pulled bunches of stiltgrass here and there and stuffed them into a bag, in an effort to prevent the uber-invasive from releasing thousands of seeds that would make our work harder next year, I started to wonder what that second truck was doing. 

It slowly sank in that the truck was about to take the portapotty away. I broke into a run, headed the truck off at the pass, waved down the driver and, when he stopped, asked him what was going on. He said he had an order to remove the portapotty. I told him that we had in years past twice had the portapotty mysteriously disappear. Each time, after telling us that the portapotty had evidently been stolen and that we owed them $1000, the company eventually figured out that through some internal miscommunication, they themselves had been the thieves. 

This time, I caught them in the act. The driver said he'd look into it, then drove away. Bye, bye portapotty.

But in less time than it takes to say "Why do weird things like this happen to us?", the truck came lumbering back to the parking lot and put the portapotty back where it belonged. Mistakes had been made, and were now being corrected.

It's a classic Hollywood storyline: Preserve gets portapotty, preserve loses portapotty, preserve gets portapotty back again. Why did it happen? These days, so much is happening that doesn't make sense. I could have asked, but part of me really doesn't want to know. The portapotty's back. That's what matters.