Pregnant And Sauntering Before Death
As a result of bad design, careless decision making and certain temporal and spacial limitations, it is now a pattern long established that I awake one morning pressed against Bernadette, and the next clutching a pillow infinitely inferior as substitute. Communicating solely with fingers against keyboard from distances not unbridgeable, we relate the movements of our days, or the lackings thereof. If I see a sad wasted lonely babbling senior citizen at the MacDonalds inside a North Carolina Walmart, who reminds me not only of myself but of Cecil the benignly demented wrong number caller, I might tell her of this (or I might not) and if she and her tightly knit building-mates on the Lower East Side are terrorized by packs of giant marauding rats intent on seeking revenge against those responsible for the wrongs done against them, she might relate such details to me.
Basic building maintenance is performed by the principal owners of the 5 story walk up. Antonio, as the only male in the owners group, is delegated in that age old sexist manner, the detail of garbage control. If only for the rather astounding number of wine bottles he removes and carries clinking in clear bags to the street for pickup, he would in any just society be pinned with a medal.
It began like this--Antonio, in the course of his duties, usually at night in that sliver of courtyard where garbage is stored, would come across rats.You must know by now that the word legendary is not misused in reference to NYC rats. Frankly, I think we all must admit that even the nervous scurrying of those cute little mice under our feet is enough to instill an unease in our lives that did not exist prior to the sighting of said small rodent. Now as a multiplier of size, and only to begin with, try the number seven. So Antonio suggested to the fellow owners that they install a light over the garbage area, and that was done. Which resulted only in Antonio being able to see the fulsome rats more clearly, with their red shining eyes and whiskers like walrus tusks becoming the images of his nightmares. And so attention was given to their sources of entry, which appeared to be from three or four broken areas in the concrete, down to the dirt, which implied a network of tunnels, a subterranean rat highway if you will, and although I without much creative reasoning begged off this repair during one of my visits, it was done, and as I believe in credit where credit is due, I think it must have been done quite well.
Bringing us to the recent party from which two smokers retired. Julia Creed, from up on three, and Bernadette's sister, Bridget, were in the basement happily restoring nicotine to their systems, when a mottled and lumpy over-sized rat (it is reportedly well over the aforementioned 7 multiplier) came sauntering out to see what all the racket was about. Bridget and Julia did not see a single beneficial aspect to prolonged rodent association and with much haste retreated up the stairs, and it is only rumor that has one or both thinking or screaming hysterically, "I don't have to outrun the rat, I only have to outrun you."
This morning I got another email from Bernadette. She said I am her buttercup, gootchy gootchy goo and I wrote back, no, you are my buttercup, gootchy gootchy goo. Not really. What she said was that the rat-sized glue traps they had set out had only succeeded in catching small families of mice or baby rats and that in their crowded sticky crypts she could hear them squeaking out a protracted death rattle. She is sitting at her desk in the basement office, illustrating children's books.
At this point in time it has been decided that the only reasonable solution to the problem is to bring into the building a rat terrier. As luck would have it there is one already living there, the cute and sassy well muscled Asher. When I first became introduced to the building I had felt some mild unease regarding the seemingly incestuous nature of its occupants, but time cures all and I have come to see the benefit of community living. This realization came to me shortly after meeting Asher for the first time, as we hit it off and began dating, if only briefly. The unseemly details of the relationship I will save for that time when I start drinking again. To leave it at this I will say, with no judgmental inference, that she was simply not my type, although I carry still a great fondness for her.
It was Bernadette who gave me the inspirational imagery for this post when she said she thinks the primary rat is a female, and pregnant, and that she saunters about mostly in the boiler room and general storage area, but also might be making her way into the clean and well lit, impressively finished basement office space. So I thought, oh, great, the giant sauntering rat, or, the giant sauntering pregnant rat, or, pregnant and sauntering, a giant rat story, or, she saunters pregnantly, or....
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