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Birds, Rats, And Asswipes
I'm sitting in the truck again, in Metairie, early, before work. The lights are on in that trailer next door to the new house I'm working on. The old man and his wife are starting their day. The man can barely walk but still rides his bike around the neighborhood. Later, I'll watch him step in a mud puddle created by my brush and roller washing on the side of the house. I can see five or six more trailers parked in driveways up the street.
The earthen levee holding back the lake is a block behind me, and the 17th St. Canal, which separates Orleans Parish from Jefferson Parish, is about ten blocks to the east. The Canal runs perpendicular to the lake levee and is defined by concrete flood walls. A portion of this criminally under-engineered east side fell down after Katrina blew through in August, the wind of which took off many a roof shingle, and knocked down a few houses here and there, throughout New Orleans. If the west side of the flood wall fails while I'm sitting here, I'll be pretty quickly under eight or ten feet of water, that is if I don't have sense enough to move to the second floor of the job site. They say they got a little water over here, maybe a foot or so, but I have yet to ascertain from where the water came. The United States Army Corps of Engineers built our flood protection system. The United States Army Corps of Engineers is a federal agency.
There are good reasons our god of federal matters, George W. Bush, came here and talked a lot of shit in Jackson Square a few months ago. I can't myself enumerate them but... Oh, crapshit, that's not my thing,, political commentary, so let me just say--it just as well that incompetent fuckhead stays out of our affairs and stays forever more, the fuck away from us. If I say fuck one more time it will be a fucking trifecta. George W. Bush fucks up everything he touches, and there it is ladies and gentlemen, the trifecta.
I think the latest excuse as to why some 200,000 homes in the New Orleans area are rendered un-livable is that some flunky Corps clerk filed incorrect information, and all the subsequent sub-standard construction can now be explained away. When I talk to people out of state they shrug off the woes of New Orleans under blanket statements like--Well, you got all those corrupt politicians down there stealing your money, what do you expect? Why should our tax dollars go to support your fucked up situation, line the pockets of bad people? Let God Bless America, put Christ back in Christmas. Can you get me one of those Chocolate City T-shirts? Not all people who express such views are limp dick Rush Limbaugh Republicans, but what the difference would be I cannot say.
Work day done, weekend begins, although I'm too tired to stand up, much less trip the lights fantastic.
The Clothes Line Laundromat on N Broad is open but not selling their famous snacks, or for that matter, laundry detergent. I left my two trash bags full of dirty clothes on the Clothes Line floor and drove to the Spur which sells no beer on N. Broad. They are out of detergent too but got some on order for Tuesday. Galvez and Canal then, they got it, and, they got it going on. Pretty good chicken and biscuits out of there too. The Laundromat, that's where I'm at now. My washer and dryer, in the kitchen at Rocheblave, need gas and electricity to work and are just ornamental, shiny white objects at this point, six point five months after the flood.
M., I'm just going to assume you're not reading this, in Oregon, and will discuss with my usual selective candor, your rat problem, on Dumaine. Any problem can be solved, let's start with that.
I read a book about rats recently and so I can say that your rats are completely normal, not mutants, or in anyway acting out of character. It is selfish of me but you know I love it when the good news and bad news are the same. It is in a way comforting, and descriptive of the human condition in general.
So I got two rat size traps from the Gemplers catalog because I was so happy with the kill rate or their mouse traps, in my pursuit of the Virginia country mouse, but let me state the obvious, that little Virginia country mouse wouldn't amount to a pimple on the ass of a New Orleans rat.
I set the two traps in the Dumaine kitchen and came back a couple of days later and one trap was sprung, and licked thoroughly clean of its peanut butter bait, and the other trap was, uh....missing. But I later found the second trap, about six feet from where I had placed it. It was behind the dryer. When I picked it up it had not a rat in it but a half eaten mouse, which to add insult to injury and death, was nearly sliced in two by the overkill strength of the metal spring bar.
So I think the the rats are recognizing the new objects and are staying away due to this suspicion and the mice are just digging in cuz they stupid, and springing the traps, maybe getting caught, maybe not, and then the rats come and eat the caught mouses, and finish up with a little peanut butter dessert.
I think I'll go over today and start gutting your front room and check those traps, and see about finding you that general contractor info you asked for so you can have better ammunition to fight Allstate for the money owed to you, but which they are trying to fuck you out of, because, yes, you in good hands with Allstate, only thing is, one of those hands is flipping you the bird, always has been.