Good things and bad things alike may be prone to escalation. When the weather turns wet and cold, chronic conditions such as tendinitis may act up. In fact, like some cowering child in a dunce cap in the corner, tendinitis is an example of a bad thing escalating. Another bad thing that was escalating, in my private life, some years back, were rats.
The vermin are common to my part of town, as they are most places. There is a network of caves and caverns under the vacant lots between our rowhouses and freestanding section 8 dwelling places that convey the rats from home to home. Rats have a talent for both digging long cavernous networks of tunnels, and also have sly inbred radar with which to identify existing networks of caves and tunnels. Like people, rats come in a variety of breeds, each with its unique talents, and among them there are some technological innovators whose gift is to improve and expand pre-existing rat holes. I met real estate developers when I lived in the South side who remind me most of this type of rat.
So I had a pre-existing rat problem when I bought my home in Perry South. But I didn't notice it right away. In 1998 my gloriously lovely calico cat was in her prime. As often as twice a month I would find a large dead rat in the living room. My beloved Noodles would stand aside from it like Rembrandt indicating his freshly painted Nightwatch. I'm not a great fan of Rembrandt's paintings, but I sure loved Noodles the cat, and the love and admiration I felt was genuine and heartfelt. She had a lovely way of expressing generosity and pride in her work. She always looked so proud when she killed a big rat, and I felt both proud and grateful for the service. I wouldn't learn for several years how great a service Noodles provided me. In her prime she was a gifted rat killer.
She and I passed a decade in bliss. If I was counting, I found perhaps a couple hundred rats on the living room floor, freshly killed, my beautiful cat watching me, my every move, my every action, like a spouse presenting a boxed anniversary gift. And so much like the aches and pains I'm feeling now from my own advancing age, I deduced over a period of about one year that Noodles had lost her sense of smell.
The loss coincided directly with an escalation in the number of rats coming into the house. Better stated, Noodles had been robbed of her ability to catch rats, thus I was seeing the rats, in the house, alive, that in years past Noodles would've left me as an ativistic gift in rigor mortis. The gift of posthumous vermin. And now I was experiencing virile and abundant living vermin. My beautiful cat retained beauty for all of her nineteen years, and I loved her as much as ever for the decade that followed, but the matter of killing rats had passed from Noodles to me. It gets like that in marriages. As partners trade their services.
Thus I learned to love rat poison. And I've been warned by some wise practitioners of Zen that sentiment can be toxic, so I will be spare in these harp string recollections. There once sold rat poisons a plumbing supply store that looked so banal, from the outside, people would turn their nose up at it, as if it wasn't more fun than Kennywood. Along with it's rows of pipes and plungers and sink fittings, there was a premanent ninety nine cent sale that kept me coming back for more cheap junk. But most of all, they sold an array of pesticides that could wipe out most things that creep into our shabby North Side slum dwellings. My very favorite one was this rat poison that came in hexagonal bars, about an inch by six inches, in a pleasant, waxy adhesive, nice freindly pale yellow color. The things never failed. One week I had fourteen inch long rats with muscular thighs, next week no rats. Pest-free, thou source of light immortal. And it all coincided with the vanishing hexagonal bars of rat poison. Jolly-o.
It was at that erstwhile plumbing store, used to be Keystone Plumbing, that I encountered humanity at its finest. So often, when I went there to buy more poison, a person nearby would notice, and be reminded that he or she, too, have an ongoing problem with rats. It was one thing, sure as state reps and bed bugs, we had all, at one time or other, had difficulties with. We could all take action in the matter, unlike those things politicians plague upon us all. If only there was a pesticide for Congress and the Supreme Court. Too bad. I'm willing accept my limitations, and take pleasure in small victories. The poison killed my rats, and I had spirited social interatctions with fellow North Siders about rats, rat poison, ants, roaches, cheating spouses, toxic waste related ailments, and all subjects relevant to people who didn't know one rat-infested thing about one another, till they started a chat while buying rat poison. In that regard, some very good things escalated. Something bad, rats, declined. So good here, North Side.
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