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My husband disposed of a dead body the other day.

I broke the news to him gently.

"Honey, there's an ead-day irrel-squay in the ool-pay," I said, holding the hand of the kid I had just prevented from jumping into the backyard kiddie pool and encountering the grim face of death in the person of one squirrel, floating, bereft of life, in the water inside.

"Oh, great," he replied.

For my husband knows that he has always been, and will always be, our family's CDODR — Chief Disposer Of Dead Rodents. He'd previously disposed of mice, but this would be his first foray into squirrels.

For in our home, there is nothing a woman cannot do if she chooses, but there are several things that she chooses not to do, and one of them is touching the waterlogged corpses of tree mammals. Call it the "droit de madame" — the right a woman of the house may exercise at any time to avoid tasks she deems sufficiently horrible.

I took our younger son to change his diaper while the real dirty work was being done outside. Getting downstairs afterward, I was surprised to find that my husband was already back on the couch.

"What did you do with it?" I asked.

"Tossed it behind the garage," he said, looking out of the corner of his eye at me.

"What if varmints get to it? I think you should throw it in the trash."

He sighed and pulled out his phone.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Checking the internet," he said, Googling — I would assume — "What does one do with a dead squirrel?"

I, who have watched a lot of "Dateline," realize that having searches like that in my internet search history could be trouble when the cops show up. And though I do not know how the squirrel actually died, here's what I would have told an investigator:

"An elderly squirrel was lying on a tree branch above the pool when he was seized by a massive heart attack. He must have fallen, dead before he hit the water, into the pool."

Eventually, my husband ended his internet searches, sighed again and got up.

"Sometimes I regret being born a man," he muttered under his breath as he walked outside to his fate, hands wrapped in a double layer of plastic bags.

Dear reader, I laughed then — a hearty, rolling chuckle, rich with the remembrances of labor pains and hormone injections. Later, out of the earshot of the kids, I asked him how it had gone.

"Horrible," he said, wrinkling his nose. "I hate doing stuff like that." He said to get through it, he pictured a drill sergeant hollering at him throughout the process.

I felt for him. I really did. I mean, I know it's hard to be a woman sometimes.

There are hills to climb, both innate and those created by our culture. We have a tougher time at work, at school and at the doctor's office.

There's pay disparity and unrealistic beauty expectations. Even if we work outside of the home or are the chief breadwinner, we're likely to also be responsible for most of the housework and child care.

We're judged for our personalities and our appearances, whether and how long we breastfeed our children, whether we baby-wear or sleep train, and how we potty train our kids. Heck, we even judge ourselves!

But no matter how hard it gets, ladies, always remember that if an adult male lives with you and someone needs to dispose of a dead squirrel, you have the right to force that adult male to do it.

Because sometimes it's hard to be a man, too.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

Photo credit: cocoparisienne at Pixabay