Jon Freeman, that space behind your pigsties is what I would call an "unpleasaunce". Every property has one: the spot where stuff gets put because no one goes there and it's out of sight most of the time and, therefore, out of mind.

The development of an unpleasaunce is close to inevitable, but they can harbour hazards. Before I married Himself, I lived in an old house in downtown Ottawa with a large garage in the back yard. The back wall of the garage was very close to the property line, as was legal back in the days when Ottawa city blocks were bisected by lanes to allow the polite passage of the night-soil man. But by the late 20th century backhouse latrines and cesspits were bit distant memories and the lanes had been absorbed into the house lots, creating the perfect space for an unpleasaunce.

Mine was occupied by a family of raccoons and, at one point, some brown rats.

I came to terms with the raccoons, who did not bother me if I kept the garbage under close arrest, but the rats were a different story. One of my cats, a small black fellow named Cecil, killed at least two -- he brought me the corpses -- and they did not invade the house, but they were a major threat to the wiring of the garage and anything stored in it.

Ah, city life.