Bait and Switch

A few weeks ago, I told you all about my period mishap inthe carpool line. What you didn’t know is there is more to the story. Trust me, there is always more to the story.

While I was making the very difficult decision to stick my hand in my pants in the carpool line, I was also talking on the phone to my friend, EL. She was aware of my predicament and was offering her moral support the way any girlfriend would over the phone, by laughing at me.  After I took care of my immediate issue, I lamented over the wastefulness that goes along with the use of feminine hygiene products.

“I can almost see the attraction of reusing rags like they did a hundred years ago. I bet I have filled a landfill on my own over the course of my long  and exhausting career in menstruation,” I told EL. “Seriously, diapers ain’t got nothing on me, girl. What a shame that used pads and tampons can’t be recycled somehow. Like, why can’t I donate blood with my used tampons? Can’t they just extract the blood and use that? Why does it have to come directly from my arm? There has to be at least a pint in a super plus, easy. I would store them in the fridge until I could transport them.”

“Are you through?” EL asked.

“Almost. I refuse to believe that A. all feminine hygiene is so ridiculously expensive and 2. We haven’t come up with a way to recycle them yet. If pads and tampons were used by men, not only would they be covered by insurance or free to all who need them like stray kittens, they would also be able to be repurposed into road repair materials or emergency bridge construction or something.”

“Hunters’ll buy ‘em,” EL said.

“It just seems like such a waste,” I said. “Wait a minute, what did you say?”

“Hunters. They buy them. I heard about it on the internet,” she said.

“You’re shitting me? What for? Fishing, maybe I could see, like shark or deep sea fishing. But hunting? What would possibly be baited by a used tampon?”

“How the hell should I know? But it’s true. Look it up.”

So I did. I couldn’t believe she could be right.

If anybody checked my Google search history, they would have me committed or, at the very least, investigated by the authorities. Seriously, the random weirdness that makes up my Google searches is a small window into a disturbed mind.

I did not find a plethora of hunters looking for a few used tampons to up their game. I did find a few hunting blogs, though, that talked about unused tampons as a tool to attract male deer. Apparently, and again, this is based on a few opinion pieces and not scientific studies, hunters will use a cotton wick soaked in deer urine as bait. They stick the wick in the ground in order to attract horny male deer that are into piss. Instead of using a wick, some hunters think the better absorbency of a tampon does the job much better.  They recommended buying a box of generic tampons for the purpose, although it wasn’t clear whether it was best to soak a tampon still in its cardboard tube applicator before ground insertion or just soak the cotton wad itself and then toss it into an inconspicuous spot and hope the deer doesn’t see that what they think is a hot leaky doe is actually just a piss covered Playtex.

What I did learn, in addition the resourcefulness of hunters, is that there are some men who might indeed be interested in your used feminine hygiene products, bait that attracts an entirely different kind of man. It turns out that the perverts who want to buy your used panties are not the only perverts out there. In the world of sexual deviants, make way for the waste fetishists! Just as some men might enjoy strappy stilettos or borrowing their wives’ panties, there are also men who do indeed want your used pads and tampons, only not for hunting, and are prepared to pay money for them.

The main issue isn’t the freshness factor, either; it’s the shipping. It turns out the postal service frowns upon shipping your bodily waste and potential biohazards through the mail, so put away those Ziploc bags, ladies. You will need some sort of sophisticated biomedical shipping containers and even a permit to send biomedical waste through the mail, so unless you are selling them locally, which, let’s face it, is the more ecofriendly and socially responsible way to conduct your period business, then you are going to need to do a little research and planning.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t really get an idea of how many men there are out in the wide wonderful world who want your used period products, only that there are indeed some vampire types walking among us. Like it or not, period blood isn’t a taboo for some dudes. The Urban Dictionary word for these guys is “Bloodhound,” referring to men who like to have sex with a gal while she is menstruating. There is a whole subcategory of oral sex fans of the red tide sort, but we won’t go into that here. Feel free to Google that on your own time.  But as far as men who want to own your old rags, well, I can’t really get my finger on that pulse.

The point is, EL was only partially correct. Yes, hunters like to use tampons. No, they don’t want your used ones. But yes, some other people might, and hopefully you will never have to meet them, unless you want to, in which case, good luck!

Maybe you are comfortable with hawking your used wares on the Internet. The rest of us will have to make do with a big wad of toilet paper wrapped around our used hygiene products and stuffed in the bottom of the trashcan, knowing that it will take more than a lifetime to break that thing down in a landfill.

 Also, ew.