SQUIRMIN' VERMIN

On the walk from my Metro stop over to my office building yesterday, a co-worker and I somehow got on the conversation of vermin: rats, mice, cockroaches. She's from New York, where rats are apparently a fact of life. I'm of course from the Pacific Northwest, where it's pretty much just ants, since it's the rarest of occasions when a slug manages to get more than a foot past your kitchen door without being scooped up with recycle paper and tossed into the ravine behind your deck. (I think I speak for everyone here, right?) Out here, we've got it all: rats, mice, cockroaches. If you want to live in the city on the East Coast, well, you've got to put up with vermin.

I pretty much forgot all about the conversation after I'd sent her this collection of New York City rat bite maps. But as it is with such things, it's never far from your mind. Last night I dreamt that my apartment had a serious mouse problem. They'd just wander up next to me on my desk, and though I wasn't much afraid, I grabbed a heavy book and brought it down hard on the mouse. Apparently in the land of subcon, mouse-flattening is a bloodless affair. I then took the book to my back door and blew the thin carcass off my balcony.

When I woke up this morning, I recalled this dream and got wondered (you could call it a premonition) if I might not run across one type of creepy crawler or another this day. Well, what do you know? While making myself a cup of coffee this afternoon, what did I see crawling up the side of my kitchen wall but an ugly brown cockroach? I'll never claim psychic powers, but somehow this just ... well, there you have it. I promptly grabbed my shoe and sent that roach to the big junkyard in the sky. That's six for six, you know.

P.S. — More weirdness. A little while ago I heard what sounded kind of like a car crashing into a wall. I figured it was just another city sound, and kept watching LeBron James have a career night while dismantling the Detroit Pistons. On a commercial I got up to see if it was still raining, and what do I see? A fire truck and an EMS van on my corner. I step outside, and there's a white sedan slammed into the retaining wall on my corner.

Maybe on Sunday I'll stay up late and call Art Bell.

UPDATE — It's now a few hours since the game ended, and just before midnight now, that car is still there. Now the emergency vehicles have departed and the driver is hanging out with a Metro PD cop. Flares are set up around the car. Really, how long does it take to find a tow truck in this town?

---

posted by WWB at 10:43 PM |