I have to imagine that most people’s wives do not text them out of the blue to ask if they are interested in acquiring elephant waste.
Apparently, the Smithsonian has partnered with a group at Cornell to figure out how to better dispose of all of the elephant waste that is created daily at the National Zoo. So, they setup an industrial composter at a Smithsonian facility (conveniently just a couple miles from our house) to compost the waste. They’ve dubbed it Project REDO – Recycling Elephant Doo Organically.
A week ago, they had a day during which Smithsonian employees could pick up some compost. So, of course we went. We put some buckets in the back of my car. I also brought a shovel and paper bags to cover my car mats. I didn’t know how much of a mess to expect.
But it turns out, there was no mess! Some nice gentlemen filled our buckets up directly from the industrial composter.
I only got enough to put on one bed. Bed 1 is full of greens that constantly touch the dirt, and Bed 2 has root vegetables. Neither of those seemed like things I would want in elephant poop. So, I added it to Bed 3, which is where my tomato plants were just transplanted. Hoping for some elephant-sized tomatoes this year!
