Parallax

Yesterday a friendly and smiling and Hello Ma'am-ing cop showed up at my door to inform me that the house next door had been broken into. "They lost a coupla tvs," he told me. "Didja hear anything?"

(I've noticed, lately, that I'm getting a lot of "Ma'am" from people. I am not sure how I feel about this. I'm not yet old enough to really enjoy my age, and while I can't wait to get there, I am also doing the typical female thing and clinging in confusion to my fading youth. But anyway.)

I had not heard anything, though I'd got home around midnight or one, which was a damned nuisance since the porch light had gone out and I haven't gone to the shop to get more bulbs. Then I spent another few hours failing at falling asleep, watching a movie while curled up with/on/under Riley in bed. Riley hadn't made a sound to indicate anything was amiss. Though in Riley's defense, the comings and goings of homo sapiens next door are none of her concern. She probably noticed, but didn't see fit to raise the alarm.

Last night, about two in the morning, I was living the wild life - curled up on the couch with the dog, watching Dr. Who. I was watching the tv, that is; she was getting her ears scratched. Then she hauled herself upright, putting an elbow into my spleen, raised her hackles, and let me know that something was not right. This was the alert/warning noise, not the LOL I LIKE TO BARK AT SKWIRLS noise. There is a big difference. Her alert involves lots of watchful stillness, and perked ears, and low growling with the occasional "hey, boss?" woof. I take it seriously, because when it comes to guarding me, Riley is very good at her job.

Being me - thus, completely fearless when I should be spooked, and terrified of useless things - I snagged one of the big boat flashlights, poked my head out the front door, and had a look. I couldn't see anything, but I could hear it. Scuffle. Scuffle-shift-quiet-slide-quiet-quiet-quiet-scoot. Indi the Stupidly Fearless told the darkness, "I can't see you, but I can hear you."

Then I went inside, thought for a moment, snagged Riley by the collar, and called the police. I was very apologetic and sort of embarrassed - "yeah, uh, the house next door was broken into last night, and my dog's pretty good about letting me know when something's up, but I don't know if there's really anything to worry about there, I didn't see anything or anyone but I heard something" - and the dispatcher assured me that I'd done the right thing and cops would be by shortly.

I put Riley's leash on and we both resumed our spots on the couch - me a bit tense, Riley at-ease but alert. Before too long she started up the alarm growling and I saw flashlight beams bouncing around in the darkness. A cop knocked on the door. I manhandled Riley out of the room, then opened the door.

"I hear y'got a prowler," a cop said. I couldn't see him, with the lack of a porchlight and the bouncing flashlight beams.

"Heard something," I said. "I didn't see it."

"Well," the cop said, swinging the flashlight beam across the yard, "there's yer suspect."

And there it was: a big full-grown armadillo, all pale and hairless, blinking stupidly in the blue-white light.

I couldn't help it. I started laughing. I giggled my way through apologizing and oh my god and I am such an idiot and my dog is such an idiot and really jesus I'm sorry, this is so stupid.

"That's all right ma'am," the cop said to me, "but I'm not gettin' anywhere near it." Which just made me laugh more. So I thanked them and said goodnight.

Once Riley was released back into the rest of the house, she growled a bit more because the Suspect Dillo was still out there, sticking its snout into ants' nests and eating small frogs. THOSE ARE RILEY'S INSECTS, DAMN IT.

At least it wasn't an alligator.

I woke up today convinced that fall had happened. I'm not sure why. I had a good night's sleep in eye-poppingly bright new sheets, and yesterday it seemed cooler at night than usual. We'd spent the day making elaborate plans for fun outside things to do once the heat breaks. None of that explains it, really. I just woke up and expected it would be fall.

It smells different here when cooler air washes down over the continent. I don't know how to describe it, but if I went fifty years without smelling it again, I would recognize it immediately once I did. That smell when the mythical fire-giants roll over and go to sleep. If you live here, you know what I mean. I was happy, content, convinced the heat had broken. I went to the back door and opened it, expecting that delicious fall smell.

Two things happened instead. I got blasted by a solid wall of swamp heat, and a little green tree frog, disturbed by the door moving under it, leapt for freedom and landed next to my foot. I nudged the frog away from the door and shut it. Maybe in a month or two.

We're so used to the drought conditions that when things act normal - like they have the past week, for certain damp definitions of 'normal' - we don't know what to do anymore. I don't, and judging by the appalling amount of people who did not turn their headlights on in a storm, neither does most of this city.



I had to go pick up some medicine for my mother, and when I heard thunder I thought that I could get out and back before the rain started. It wasn't far - two stops, maybe five miles total. I dropped the ball on doing it earlier, and she wasn't up to going, so I grabbed my things and stepped out into a drizzle.

I've got to stop assuming I am faster than a cloud because I'm not, even when I'm in a car.



An hour later I was under a protective overhang on the outside of a large warehouse of a store, clutching a plastic bag of medicine in one hand and a purple umbrella in the other. People were standing around watching the rain and waiting for it to stop before they went to their cars. I unfurled my umbrella with a flick of the wrist, thought "Fuck it, why not?" and stepped out.

I think I heard some people say things behind me, but I'm not really sure because the sound of rain was everywhere. I began slogging through drifts of standing water when I realized that, hey, this sort of thing would have been fun when I was eight, and it's still fun now. I had a purple umbrella and dry feet and great puddles and a thunderstorm that wouldn't quit. I kicked my way back to the car, laughing as I went, and when someone in a minivan drove by slowly (checking on me, concerned, and causing a surge of water that submerged the buckles on my boots) I just grinned like a maniac. He grinned back.

Sometimes you're gonna get rained on no matter what you do, so the thing is to try to have fun with it.



Have fun and hope your car doesn't stall when the floods hit the bottom side of the engine. But I got home okay.

Tomorrow I'm getting rain boots.

bleukarma, you don't want to read this.

I was innocently taking my trash out. Had a bag in both hands, was on my way to the bin, when something ENORMOUS started to rustle and wrestle in the palmetto above my head. Being me, I said, "What the shit is that?" and skipped half a foot backwards to look up, without dropping my trash bags. I noticed the beady-eyed and familiar shape of Window Frog, who is master of that particular palmetto. Satisfied that nothing was going to descend upon my head and devour me with nineteen pointy legs and fangs and pincers and things, I continued on my way.

I put the bags in the bin and rolled the bin down to the street.

Then I felt something cold and damp on my hip, the right side, just above where my jeans end. Under my shirt. Before I even had a chance to jump or yell or do anything beyond look down, a small frog leapt out from under my shirt, landed on my knee, ascertained its location, then boinged off to the ground, where it mixed with the gravel well enough that I couldn't see it.

TO SUM UP: A BIG FROG THREW A SMALL FROG AT ME AND IT CLIMBED UNDER MY SHIRT.

Eh. It's Florida. And it's me. What do you expect?

Put the record on as you read this story. When you hear the chime, turn the page.

This was.... summer of 1997, I believe. A new hazard had come to Tampa, former home of such exotic diseases as yellow fever -- or was it malaria? Whichever it was, it gave Teddy Roosevelt a hell of a time when he was-or-wasn't building secret tunnels under the hotel which later became UT. Everyone knows he did that, despite the water table being approximately six inches below the ground over there, what with the river and all.

Still, there was a serious threat in 1997. Bigger than yellow fever. But they weren't spraying for bugs that bring diseases. They were spraying for fruitflies. Fruitflies at danger levels. There would be breaking news about one or two fruitflies being found in traps in residential neighborhoods, which obviously meant they were going to step up a massive assault and kill every piece of citrus and send the state bankrupt. The mediterranean fruit fly is a dangerous foe indeed.

Paralyzed with fear of losing the citrus-kings' money, the state ponders: what to do, what to do... and then the answer comes. Aerial bombardment!

A fleet of old Vietnam-era military helicopters (you know, the kinds with the big open cutouts on each side?) were outfitted with pesticide sprayers and began a methodical covering of every square inch of the county. I don't know how things fared in other counties - maybe more, since most of the citrus is inland, and Hillsborough's mostly residential.

The weapon of choice was malathion, which is said to have relatively low human toxicity, although the EPA can't agree on whether or not it's carcinogenic. I'm sure the citrus companies say it isn't. I'll just say that anything that can strip finish off the roof of a car in an afternoon - I've seen this - is not something I want to get sprayed with.

Thus armed, the choppers set out.

So. 1997, summertime. Noon, or thereabouts. I'm in summer school, having badly failed algebra, and class is just letting out, and out of fucking nowhere comes this ENORMOUS GODDAMN BLACK HELICOPTER LIKE TWENTY FEET ABOVE US SPRAYING THE SCHOOL WITH PESTICIDE.

Cue up some smartass, who was probably me: "I LOVE THE SMELL OF MALATHION IN THE MORNING!"*

Cue up some other smartass, who wasn't me: "LIEUTENANT DAN! WHERE ARE YOU?"

Cue up the mass exodus of actual Vietnam vets to Nebraska, because really, you can't enjoy your goddamn retirement in a fucking madhouse like this.

*(It smelled bitter-tangy, as I recall, although that could be mixing up memories of citrus with memories of pesticide.)

Said the newscasters: "Malathion is not harmful. However, if you are sprayed, take off all contaminated clothing, shower immediately, and do not wear anything contaminated until it has been thoroughly washed in hot water with detergent. BUT IT WON'T HURT YOU. Oh, and wash your cars. As soon as is humanly possible. But do it in a professional car wash because of the water restrictions. And this stuff is totally safe. Try not to drink the groundwater either, okay?"

The impending Mediterranean Fruitfly attack was thwarted, and everyone more or less survived. Especially the funneling of citrus cash into the state's coffers, never to actually be seen by the general public.

The following summer there was a wicked outbreak of West Nile, brought on by torrential rain, a mass increase in mosquito population, and probably the fact that the fucking malathion had killed everything that eats mosquitoes. Nobody brought the Vietnam copters back out. People just were advised to maybe go to the hospital, you know, if your neck swells up, because that could be encephalitis that might kill you. I reckon I've had the West Nile by now, as bug-chewed as I get in the summertime.

(clipped from an email 'cos oregoonie wanted to know about this one, and lately I've been in raconteur-mode)