The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The Monk was uptown last week making his once a week shopping trip. You live down on the South End, you schedule your trips to town as infrequently as possible unless you’re driving a Prius or you’re one of the new folks who couldn’t tell you WHAT the price of gas is and couldn’t care less. The Monk drives a beat-up Ford 150 pickup that gets about ten miles to a gallon of gasoline, about two gallons to town. It runs, barely, and if he could afford something better on his Social Security, he’d gladly own a hybrid, buy better food and probably become a howling environmentalist.

He was squeezing melons over in the produce section. No, not organic melons. Did I mention he was scraping by on Social Security? The Monk buys what’s on sale. The Monk eats on the cheap. The Monk — I’ll give him this — cooks his meals from scratch. The only Hamburger Helper he’d dream of is himself. He’s not much for boxed anything, he doesn’t care how long the preservatives will keep it edible. He makes his own spaghetti sauce, his own salad dressings, eats mostly fresh. He’s not exactly the poster child for Good Health and Living, but he tries. “You are what you eat,” he tells me. The Monk is about half broccoli.

He was squeezing that melon, I think I mentioned, when this guy comes by him with a parrot on his shoulder. The Monk stops squeezing his melon and holds a hand up to Long John Silver and his bird. The Monk, maybe I haven’t mentioned, is not exactly Live and Let Live. He’s ornery and he’s opinionated and he doesn’t suffer fools with parrots lightly. “What the hell, Bluebeard?” he asks the man with the bird. “That some kind of Service Animal?”

“It’s a parrot,” Sinbad replies, smiling, probably pleased his antics haven’t gone unnoticed. “I KNOW what it is,” the Monk says. “It’s a damn disease carrying bird in my food store. You need it to locate the crackers for Polly here?” Well, one thing led to another, the manager finally came down to the produce section and the Monk demanded this pirate wannabee goofball get that flu-bearing bird away from his chard and his tomatoes. The manager, noticing Cap’n Hook didn’t even have a basket, much less a cart, sided with the Monk and asked if he could leave his bird back in his car. Or his schooner.

“You believe that shit?” the Monk asked me when I dropped by when he was unloading his groceries from the truck. “These are tough times, Monk. Them that died be the lucky ones. The rest of us, well, who’s to judge?”

He gave me a dark look from over the melons. “The Monk, that’s who.”

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While I was queued up at the long lines of the South End International Airport two days ago pushing my duffle bag by footkick the two miles to the patdowns and X-rays, a nice TSA lady asked us if we had any pets. “Dogs, birds, snakes … peacocks? Yes,” she laughed, we’ve had peacocks.” I was seriously glad I’d left my chickens home to roost. No telling what the airlines demand for pet fees if they get $25 per piece of luggage one way.

Maybe it’s less for chickens or turtles or small reptiles, I wouldn’t know. I’ve ridden with small dogs in carrying cases their owners stuffed under their seats. No charge back then in the Friendly Skies, but I’m betting now there’s a price plus proof of rabies shots. The overhead bins are totally crammed so good luck stuffing little Woofsie up there. A snake, sure, always room for a coiled serpent. They can curl right up and snooze for hours, but they’re probably surly when they get disturbed. I’m sure, though, they’re defanged.

‘Comfort pets’, I guess we call these critters, what used to be ‘service animals.’ If you were blind, you had a trained dog to safeguard you crossing streets. I don’t know if a parrot is really trainable for that. Just does the talking, maybe, for the mute. Or a boa constrictor. Comfort? Well, that’s a tougher call. I had peacocks way back. No way were they a comfort, not with that scream of theirs like a kid being hit with a red hot branding iron. Pretty though. Be quite a show to spread a six foot iridescent fan and shake it in the aisles. But not comforting, sorry, not at 35,000 feet.

Who knows where this all ends? Noah’s Ark Airlines, maybe a niche in the industry where, for a small fee, they provide a flying kennel. Leash free areas even. Just one huge comfort zone. At least til the terrorists start using Cockapoodles to attack the flight crew. Then those pet fees are going through the roof….

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