The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I saved a life today. I usually like to think these blogs save lives every day, but let’s be honest here and assume I’m not running for president. Truth is, well, the truth is…. At least I’m not taking lives with these blogs. I don’t think.

But today I was down by the toolshed turning off the water to the garden. I’d turned and headed back to the glass factory when a funny noise caught my ear, a strange sound but not the usual menagerie of cacophony in the orchard, something that made me stop and listen harder. Sure enough it was odd and it seemed to be coming from near the spigot. Then I heard splashing and that same squeaking sound, weirdly troubling.

I got to the spigot and then I noticed the large tub we use to catch water off the toolshed roof was where the disturbance was emanating and when I looked inside, there was a small beaver swimming circles in there, treading water, half drowned. We don’t have a lot of beavers that do the dog paddle so I recalculated and realized it was our little red squirrel, the guy who sits in the plum tree and chatters at us while we putter around. He seems to be a talkative little rodent, maybe a little too chatty, but we talk back and he listens. Not that we’re learning each other’s lingo, but sometimes it’s important to attempt communication. Like I say, I’m not running for president.

The language he was using in the tub wasn’t hard to understand. He was down to the last breath, exhausted and cold and probably thinking it would be okay to just let go, sink into the water and drown. There was no way he could scrabble up the plastic sides of the tub and who knows how long he’d been swimming for his life in there, maybe a helluva lot longer than I would’ve and I have to say, I was impressed at his will to live.

I pulled him out and laid him in the sun where he looked for all the world like a drowned rat, fur matted to his convulsing body, tail flattened, eyes rolled back barely noticing me. I didn’t really know if he’d spent himself or taken water into his lungs or what … and I don’t know squirrel CPR. But I stayed with him and moved him once in awhile to a warmer spot and after half an hour of shivering and hopefully resting, he wobbled up, ran between my legs and hightailed it for the woods.

I drained all our buckets and tubs. I hope both of us learned a couple lessons here. And I hope next time he’s parked on his favorite limb of the plum tree, he doesn’t cuss me out for leaving that tub there. But I wouldn’t blame him.

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In the digital world where no kindness goes uncriticized and no act goes unjudged, it’s maybe not surprising to you that the mom of that kid who managed to slip into the gorilla’s cage last week is under more crossfire than a Marine in Afghanistan. The zoo shot the gorilla in a scene right out of King Kong and the Twitter Universe unleased its full and unadulterated outrage. At the mom.

Now I love gorillas as much as the next South Ender. Supposedly they’re endangered elsewhere, but not so much here. We got plenty down this end of the island, mostly guys who beat their wives and spend far too much time watching ESPN on the cable TV they really can’t afford. But then, they don’t snap up wayward kids who wander into their unmowed junk strewn yards. If they did, we’d bring in the SWAT boyz and the TV crews and the internet trolls looking for fresh targets to vent their pent-up rage on. Pity the moms. Pity the gorilla. Pity the poor schnook at the zoo who had to make the decision to shoot Kong.

But pity is a hard commodity to locate these days, especially if you’ve been following presidential election politics this hunting season where pity is deemed fit only for losers. We’re growing sharper claws and longer teeth. We’re molting our old skin and growing a tougher hide. Pity? Forgiveness? I don’t think those words live in the new vocabulary of grunts and shrieks. When the weak stumble, they become prey.

I guess it’s the anonymity of the internet. Used to be you could flip off a fellow motorist from the safety of your one ton automobile or your two ton Hummer fighting machine, pretty much drive off feeling smug and righteous, but now, behind the screen of a laptop, you can lob missiles with no fear of retribution. Nice to think the worst in us comes rising up, the toxins we held in check out of politeness or fear or peer group pressure, what we once thought of as civilized societal norms. You know, before the internet jungle hid us in its strangler vines.

I’m going to miss that gorilla I never even met. I like to think he was protecting the little toddler, maybe even planned in a simian sort of way to raise him up in gorilla values. I’m real glad he didn’t hurt that kid who I hope will grow up to be kind to animals, even the human ones. He’d be almost a hero if he did, just not in the Twitterverse.

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Scientists this past week declared that a bacteria was found in this country totally resistant to antibiotics. Great news if you’re an e-coli bacteria, not so good if you’re a human being. For decades we’ve treated chickens and pigs and turkeys and hypochondriac homo sapiens with antibiotics, giving out tetracycline and every other antibiotic like candy, never figuring the little bugs would adapt to this, despite the fact that they breed like … well, bacteria. In 1928 when Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin would kill the little buggers, it heralded in a new age of medicine.

Ninety years later, well, we got a brand new age of medicine. For almost a century we could control everything from staph to tuberculosis. Not bad for us humanoids. But the microscopic monsters were slowly working out defenses to our gigantic big brained discoveries. And now they’ve beaten us. We got a little complacent this time, and instead of using this miracle drug to cure diseases for us humans, we found we could make chickens grow big, salmon grow bigger and pigs grow to the size of tractor trailers. We could give patients the stuff when the doctors knew it wouldn’t do anything more than shut them up, a pill or two as placebo, maybe it would keep them from coming back when the viral infection ran its natural course. The pharmaceutical conglomerates sure didn’t mind.

We all grew up, I guess, thinking there was a pill for pretty much everything that ails us. We might’ve been alarmed when something like a flesh eating bacteria or HIV rolled in, some bug that we’d never imagined, something that would kill us for sure, our very own Black Plague. Course, we could always find a cure we figured. We could make a vaccine or discover a new antibiotic. Science, it’s on our side.

Now it looks like all bets are off. Unless you’re betting on the bugs. Or you were investing in Big Pharma stocks. Might be a good time to double down on health care stocks instead, not that being rich is gonna do us much good when the epidemics come….

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Last time we talked about Colton Harris Moore, he was cooling his heels in the federal pen and trying to raise money to chill his mom before she died of cancer, well, freeze his mom before she died of cancer. I think in most states this would qualify as murder, but … this is the South End. Life isn’t quite as precious as other places so the options look better, even what to some might seem cruel and capricious, we see as opportunity.

The Kid raised $80,000 before his mom died. That’s not half bad for a month’s worth of internet fundraising. For freezing his dear old mother. You might be asking yourself, like me, who in the name of Einstein is throwing money at the boy for a cryogenic solution that is, at best, quackery for the rich? I offered up my unused freezer, but cash? — I don’t think so. Maybe if it was for Albert himself or Mother Theresa, but Colton’s mom??? I don’t want to appear heartless, but c’mon, she was not someone you would want to bring back to this mortal coil. No way.

It’s scary enough Colton wanted to freeze his ma and hope to bring her back when science had found a way to thaw her without freezer burn. You know, when we’d cured cancer and poisonous personality. But scarier yet are all these folks willing to donate to the cause. There are legitimate causes out there, everything from curing Alzheimers to diabetes. But freezing an old irascible woman? The very same woman who could be the poster for Bad Motherhood? C’mon.

Colton gets out of prison soon, having paid for his crimes with his time. I know a lot of folks are worried what he’ll do with his life. Whether he’ll turn over a new leaf. Whether he’ll rehab into a model citizen, get a job, settle down, marry, have kids, become a productive member of society. I think we can all quit wringing our hands over this kid. He’s going to do just fine as a fundraiser. The real question, I suppose, is whether he’ll do it legitimately or as a flim flammer. Either way, he’s got the skillset.

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I was downtown the other day doing my weekly errands off-island when some Good Samaritan hustled across the gas station parking lot to tell me my hat looked like it was on its last legs and if I needed a fresh one, he knew a great place to pick one up cheap. This is a bit like the fella that asks the woman in front of him in the checkout line when her due date is … only to learn she’s not pregnant, just overweight.

A lesser man mighta taken umbrage. A lesser man mighta even been embarrassed that his sombrero looked like a scarecrow’s castoff. But I said I thought maybe my hat would last a few days longer, thanks for the concern. He didn’t seem to pick up on my subtle clues that perhaps I liked this old hat and wasn’t much interested in replacing it with some storebought doppleganger despite the fact that it would look brand spanking new. And clean. And presentable. Make a new man of its wearer. Give off a right smart image. You know, like I was a Nashville recording artist on vacation.

“They got all kinds,” he insisted. “Cheap ones too. Even though they got some real expensive ones.” I think he picked right up on the fact I didn’t look like someone who would pay $500 for a Borsalino rabbit pelt fedora. My Borsalino I found in a thrift store for two bucks, already nicely worn, comfortable as, well, an old hat.

“Right up the road,” he assured me. “Hundreds of hats. You could get a new one like yours for ten dollars.”

“A new one wouldn’t be like mine,” I said, getting a little tired of my haberdashery missionary’s unsolicited zeal. It takes some careful aging to get a hat into the condition mine was in. I said, “I notice you don’t wear one yourself. A hat, I mean.” At this, my benefactor backed up a step or two. “If it was sunny today, I might,” he explained awkwardly. “I got a straw hat like yours I wear if it’s sunny.”

I wanted to tell him if he had one like mine, I knew where he could get a better one. Instead I just thanked him for his referral. “When this one dies, I’ll give the place a look-see,” I said. I figure maybe in a few years, then I’ll go check the Goodwill. Guys like me, it’s always sunny enough to wear a well-worn hat.

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