Bad day, defined
Okay, compared to this guy (man, that croc is an evil looking bastard, isn’t he? Photo via NZ Herald), my day was a dawdle. But I had to deliver the coup de grâce to an injured squirrel on my morning commute, and that’s never an auspicious sign. How come road-injured squirrels always lie in one spot jerking and flipping out like that wounded Daryl Hannah replicant thing in Blade Runner? Horrible.
I dug out the old work laptop I use to test programs, plugged in the wifi dingus…and discovered I don’t have admin privileges on that machine. So I put it on the network and called the Helpdesk. It hasn’t been on the company net in a couple of years, so it’s all screwed up for updates. Turns out, that model was “retired” a while back and I was supposed to turn it in. I thought for a moment it was going to get confiscated, but someone dutifully picked it up for a re-image. I should have it back tomorrow.
Somehow making IS complicit in the circumvention of their own rules pleases me.
I wrote the above sentence about forty five minutes ago, then Damien came in and laid a large, fine woodrat at my feet. Pity it wasn’t dead. It jumped up, shrieked, ran across my feet and disappeared under the radiator in the livingroom. We could see it dashing back and forth underneath, the perfect cat-tease. Every time Damien hooked a paw in its direction, it would let out another squeak. Rodents don’t squeak like squeak toys. They squeak like forks raked across dinner plates. You hear it with your molars.
I held a cardboard box against the radiator with my knees, got a bamboo back-scratcher in one hand, an empty paper towel roll in the other, and tried to spook it toward captivity and ultimate freedom. But it was not to be. It leapt over my backscratcher and holed up under a big armchair, behind a pile of old comics. It’s quiet now.
Damien is curled up in front of the chair, placid as the Buddha. Fuck it. I’m going to drink. I’m not offing two adorable rodents today. Death is going to have to sort itself out this time. I just wish it wouldn’t do that whole “red in tooth and claw” thing on the wall-to-wall carpets.
April 30, 2007 — 5:56 pm
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