The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Didn’t I just write about parrots in my produce section? I thought I’d pretty much seen it all. Course, you think that, you’re either in hospice or you haven’t watched reality TV lately. Down here on the South End, if we know one thing, it’s this: something weirder is coming down the blacktop, probably sooner than later.

This weekend I was loitering by the dairy case looking for some growth-hormoned-up milk products when a guy passes by me and on his back, plastered down like a silk-screened tattoo was this scaly lizard , claws hanging on to his t-shirt at the neck. At first I thought it was a rubber toy. You know, give grandma a good laugh when she recovers from her heart attack. But it was real. Some gila monster or maybe a small komodo dragon, hard for me to say not being a herpetologist.

I don’t know — maybe you got a python you like to go to the mall with. Or a crocodile tame enough to bring to the daycare when you pick up your kid. Maybe I’m just an old fogey out of touch with current trends in animal husbandry, a curmudgeon who thinks a vicious pitbull should suffice for those looking for attention-getting pets.

It’s a free country I’m told, especially on the live and let live South End. In fact, Jungle Jim informed me of that when I asked him why he needed a lizard to go shopping with. At the checkout line I paid my bill and said to Jenny as she handed me change, “There’s a guy coming through with a gila monster on his back pretty soon.” She laughed. I said, “No, seriously, he’s got a two foot lizard on his back.” From her reaction, I’d guess they don’t see a whole lot of reptiles in the store. Jenny asked what did I think.

“Tell him you’ve got to weigh it.”

“Weigh it?” Jenny asked.

“Sure, tell him you charge $14.99 a pound for whole lizard. More if he wants it cleaned and deboned.”

Somehow I don’t think Jenny was going to. The customer, I guess, is always right.

You live upriver half your life, you’d feel a little like the world was constantly moving past you, no slowing it down. I think folks who live down further where the river empties into the Sound must watch the tides go out then come back in. Over and over. Do they see the world as a constant ebb and tide? A flowing out, then a return? Is the world to them like breathing, an inhalation and exhalation?

I was up Otter Creek last week checking on Indian Bob. He’s part Stillaguamish, part Norwegian and mostly, just Ornery. Lives alone, he says, because he likes it that way, but I know he couldn’t live two days with someone before it drove him to homicide. He has set routines and he likes to keep em set. He tolerates my visits — interruptions to him — for awhile, but not long. He’ll announce he’s got to get back to his chores even though both of us know he’s going to watch daytime TV with his two dogs. It’s my signal that it’s time to quit our socializing.

Bob has a rundown cabin set beside a backwash that dries up most summers when Otter Creek becomes little more than a trickle. I often think his world is more attuned to seasonal shifts. Time flows, just way slower.

I don’t so much think of Bob as native American as I do Zen Priest. It’s like he’s nearly stopped the River. I would go bat guano crazy with boredom living his life, but like I said, I’m a river person and the universe is in constant motion for me, maybe WHY I live upriver. Or maybe I became this way because I live here. Do you choose your environment or does your environment make you?

Indian Bob told me once his grandmother, a Stillaguamish elder back when Elder meant something, told him that there are no mysteries for those who ask no questions. All I can figure is she must’ve lived on a lake. Me, I got lots of questions, just not enough answers.