The grass is always greener over the septic tank. That’s the title of a book by the famous humorist Erma Bombeck.

Long before the mommy bloggers stormed the internet, Erma was writing funny stuff about life in the suburbs.

In addition to the grass being greener on the other side of the fence, or where you water it, or any other variation of the envy quote, there is always the practical answer that the grass is green where it has been well fertilized.

As a kid, I remember seeing that book title and laughing uproariously at the implied poop joke. This was long before my two lovely boy children made them a regular part of daily conversation.

At any rate, septic tanks have been on my mind lately. I came out of the house one morning to a pretty horrific stench hovering in the air. Since it’s been rainy or overcast almost every single day this entire summer, any stink in the air tends to get trapped close to the ground. A few nights earlier, traces of a skunk hung around for most of the day. But this was something really different.

Thankfully (or not), I have two keen Airedale noses and they were on the scent immediately. I’m speculating after the fact here, but my best assessment is that a bear, and a pretty good sized one at that, somehow managed to unearth and open the lid to our septic tank. Whether it was intentional or accidental, the lid was off, and the tank was exposed.

One dog was much more interested in what had moved the lid and happily ran off in the woods trailing that scent. The other dog, however, oh, he wanted what was in that tank in the worst way. I was slow to the scene to begin with, and then it took a few seconds to process what I was seeing, and my mischievous Henson managed to get both front paws and his snoot into the hole before I screamed, “LEAVE IT” at the top of my lungs.

He correctly inferred from my agitated tone, or maybe the stench was too overwhelming even for him, that this was definitely the one time to listen to me immediately. Of course, he also wanted to apologize profusely, or maybe share his fabulous find with me, and insisted on trying to spread the wealth while we walked back to the house.

The next trick was trying to get Henson staked down so that I could hit him with the hose while trying not to come in contact with him. He was less than thrilled by this arrangement. Just as I got him situated, with minimal contact, Dunc returned from his fruitless exercise of trying to track down the bear (at least I think it was a bear, or else we have some jumbo sized raccoons running around) and decided that he had to investigate Henson from head to toe. So, he too, got a good blast with the hose.

I was able to get most of the visible matter off Henson without any contact, but it was obvious I was going to have to do some shampooing to rid us of the smell. But, before we got to that point, I wanted to make sure I closed off the tank and washed down the area as well as I could so he wasn’t tempted to go back and roll around in it again.

All of this was rather fortuitous because it made me realize that getting the septic tank cleaned out was always on Steve’s to-do list. Our years of living in town had gotten us used to the wonder of public sewer and after we moved back to the farm, it was one of those things that we “really needed to take care of some day.”

So, after getting both dogs freshened up and sealing off the troublesome hole, my next call was to the septic service company.

A few days later the truck pulled up, siphoned off all that yuck, and now hopefully, it will not be attractive to any animals, wild or domestic. The kids have taken the opportunity to reiterate every poop joke that they’d ever made and invented a few new ones. The dogs are profoundly disappointed that the delightfully smelly hole has been covered up again. And, I finally have one major household chore checked off the to-do list.

Now, the grass can get really green. Which just means I have to mow it again.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News