A Dirty, Filthy Rat

1) Today, I saw two dogs running down the street, strung together on a rope. Nobody appeared to be walking them. Perhaps they were walking each other. I wanted to take their picture, but my camera was out of juice.

2) Yesterday morning, I put a saucer full of birdseed on my windowledge, in hopes of attracting wild birds. Come evening, all the seed had gone, and so had the saucer. Although I stole glances all day, I neither saw nor heard the culprit.

3) The only way to buy whole milk in Vancouver, it seems, is to buy a whole cow. Looks like I'm stuck with two percent.

Where did that saucer go, anyway? It wasn't some flimsy plastic thing, liable to frisbee off over the rooftops at the first gust of wind. It wasn't dainty porcelain, either. It was a great hulking stoneware job, built to withstand the weight of at least two crows and a seagull. Yesterday's weather was nice, anyhow--only wind round these parts was out of the telephone (Mother).

Be it established, then, that it didn't blow off. Maybe a bird stole it. (Ha! Can you imagine the bird that'd flap off with something like that? I've got an albatross admirer, now?) Your average crow or grackle, he might get a few feet with it, but then he'd be down like a stone, all squawks and thwarted greed. A hawk or a falcon might well make off with a saucer, but not without being heard. The delicate whirr of a budgie's enough to rouse me at the crack of dawn. No way would I miss some whacking great bird of prey.

Cats move in silence--it might have been a cat. Except it couldn't have been, not on the fifth floor. The trees don't branch close enough to let a cat leap onto the windowledge, and they certainly can't climb glass and concrete. The only way a cat could've done it is if he dropped from a higher floor, stopped to knock down my saucer, then continued his fall. Hardly a likely scenario.

A neighbour with very long arms could've--

--no, he couldn't.

I went downstairs, expecting to find the remains of my saucer splattered all over the pavement, but--well, nothing. I hung around like a wally for a while, even getting down on my knees to examine the sidewalk-cracks for ceramic shards, but to no avail. Then, it occurred to me that a saucer falling from my ledge would never reach the street, owing to there being a great ivy-covered terrace in the way. So I went back up again, and examined that through the zoom-lens of my camera. There was a bench and a table, and a pair of pink underpants, but nothing resembling a saucer.

I'm reasonably certain I didn't bring the saucer in, myself. It would be littering the countertop, if I had. I am a dirty, filthy rat. I never put anything away.

What we have here, birds and blokes, is a bona fide mystery. (My money's on Colonel Mustard, in the flat across the street, with an amusingly long grabbing device. Wheeee!)

One of the garbage bags ruptured this morning, when I tried to pick it up. Grotty green garbage goo went all over my feet. Later, as I was stuffing the ruptured bag into a supplementary bag, that same goo wiped itself all over my forearms and chest. By the time I'd cleaned up the mess, located a twist-tie, and taken out the dust, I'd been begoo'd from head to toe.

Happily, my flat no longer smells.

Sadly, after three showers and a tomato-soup rinse, I still do. Faugh!

Up next: a nice lemon juice shampoo.

...but it'll have to wait. Richard is coming over, and he insists, even knowing I smell. Is it possible to expire, in the literal sense, from embarrassment?