Media idiocy and urban animals and flashbacks

Have been sleeping around the clock, and when I DO get up, look for anything distracting from what I dream about, which usually isn't good.

Today's distraction was ninety minutes of watching Britain's Got Talent, the fourth week of the most amazing nonsense 'EVAH'. For the most part. They did have a twelve year old autistic child who danced, and was fairly amazing. I was thinking 'Billy Elliot'. And later there was a hedgehog which triggered a memory, and no, not Alice in Wonderland, and croquet. I had an immediate flashback.

Long ago, I had a garden, it was tiny. But more than enough for one person to tend to. A long bed for flowers that ran along the length of the side of the house, a narrow strip out back, which was filled with all sorts of things, and the fence was full of roses, absolutely beautiful roses, and a clump of lavender not far from our bedroom window which would just fill the air in the room at night, and make you dream beautiful things. The roses were all scented as well, and in the year before I left, you could hardly see the fence for the roses. I'd alternated shrubs with climbers, and they were all my 'babies'. There was a patch I'd cleared out and laid down a patio, all on my own, and if guests were visiting, we would sit out, have a late night snack, and as the neighbors said, laugh a lot. One of them said that was what they missed most when things went south. Our cheerfulness and laughter.

And I'd forgotten all about the hedgehog, till they flashed one on the programme today. My cousins were visiting, and we were out on the patio very late, when my local hedgehog came scurrying from the gate making a bee-line for my forsythia hedge, which it seemed to like.

My cousin L thought it was a very large rat, I don't think she'd ever seen a hegehog before. They have quills, and a very long snout, and a sort of hairless rat's tail. She completely freaked out, and I tried to reassure her that it wasn't a rat. But it ended a perfectly lovely evening, must have been around this time of year, because it got dark late. Hedgehogs are an endangered species here, and if you have one in your garden, it's sort of good luck. I'd pile up leaves in the autumn, on the off chance one would want to hibernate for the winter in it, just a corner of it. I never checked, but would like to think one of them would have marked it off as a 'safe house' for the winter.

Urban animals are best left undisturbed.

In every sense.

The back lot behind our house was a real mess for a while. Stacked lumber, which brought on a plague of slugs, and I could have killed the neighbor who leased it. My raids on the slugs were legendary, and it wasn't a rare day that I brought in hundreds of their corpses and flushed them down the toilet. Already stabbed to death. Hideous things.

However, they would drain the brook in the park once a year just to clean out the crap people threw away, like bicycles, baby carriages, and what-not. And it would be the time when the weasels were mating. Yeah, they loved those wood-piles, all right. And raised such a ruckus it was amazing, amusing, astounding. They do it during the day, seemingly, because they were outide my kitchen window, cavorting acrobatically. And made one hell of a lot of noise.

Cats do it at night and are vicious and loud. Weasels were sort of funny.

The last weasel I saw was coming home at night, and was under a car on a main street, probably chewing on its' brake-line, and being intrusive by walking by on my way home from work, it scuttered over to the other side of the street so fast, I wasn't sure I'd seen it.

Bats used to fly around in the evening, but they weren't of much concern. As far as I was concerned, they were useful, eating up the bugs which could give you Lyme's disease, so they were fine by me, although they didn't used to be... So in a city of 250,00o people, the fauna is ok. I guess.

Where I grew up, there were only sewer rats, and once the Ven fearlessly killed a water mocassin as we were on our way to go fishing. They really weren't native to NH. He beheaded it nicely, and very fast, and wouldn't let my brother or me touch it's head. That area outside town was sort of cursed. They had a lot of rattlesnakes, which are also not common to the region. And I had some awful run-ins with sewer rats as well---as soon as anyone excavated for a new building, they came out. 'Wicious' ugly things. Never saw one here, but am sure they are building on taking over the world once we decide to kill ourselves off for the duration....

And yeah, there was 'the incident' at the Strand theater. I believe it was also during the showing of 'The St. 'Valentine's Day Massacre'. The Strand was a very old theater. And we had a lot of 'fun' during that run. Like the ushers marching down the center aisle carrying guitar cases right before the climactic scene, with 'gangsta' hats, opening them up at the climactic scene, pulling out toilet plungers, and aiming them at the screen yelling 'äh-äh-äh-'äh-äh-äh-äh!!!' (They got an ovation from the audience... because otherwise, they were sort of bored.)

I don't remember the time frame, but sometime later, there was an evening showing, and there was a thunderstorm outside. And a piece of the ceiling fell down, mercifully not killing someone in the audience, and a bat buzzed the audience, because it's home had been destroyed and it was upset.

We managed to steer it into the lobby, and killed the poor thing with brooms. (Sorry Karma, we didn't know how useful they are...)

And the audience was screaming.

Those were the days, all right... The Strand was creepy, and I never liked working there. Especially having to get anything from the cellar. It was of brick vaults, seemingly endless, and if you had the nads to even go there, you heard scurrying sounds and squeaks and peeps.... sewer rats. And I would grab a replacement chair... can still smell the mildew, and it was squalid,

One evening, a man from the audience came out to the lobby and said, 'Please tell my wife that those are two CATS fighting out in front of the front row.' So I went to see what was up, but they were sewer rats. And I said, 'oh, those are our calico CATS, and I think you should move back a few rows, they are 'in heat'. (Oy...)

(It just popped outta me mouf...)

It was rumoured that the Strand was haunted by a woman ghost. Never saw one hint of her, but there you go...

The Strand was sort of a place which Steven King could make a million dollar novel out of. When I went to my hometown for a visit, it had burned down, and only the portal outside on the street was left, for historical reasons, I presume. I hope all the rats died horribly in it.

So... if I would choose between where I grew up and where I am now... weasels and hedgehogs and good bats seem to be a tame sort of choice when it comes to urban animals.

And I so miss my garden. My neighbors ruined it once I was gone. They did everything to sabotage it, everything, and now it's just a ruin. It was a tiny plot of land, but more than enough for me. I'd come home after a stressful day, and spend an hour or so just tending to it. Everything I learned about tending it I got from observing.

Our living room windows overlooked the garden of a pastor of an evangelical church across the street. And he had a spectacular garden, one to die for. And it was HUGE. And I would watch what he was doing, and know what to do in my tiny place. Then he retired, and a woman pastor took over.

She razed it, even tried to have the city ordinance changed to turn it into a parking lot, which was denied in the end. And she had the GALL to invite the retired pastor for some function, and I saw him coming up the street and the look on his face when he saw what decades of loving work had become.. a lawn. That was one of the cruellest things I've ever seen.

Weasels, and bats, and hedgehogs? I think it is PEOPLE one should be careful of.

I haven't been up that street in years, I wouldn't be able to take the hurt. They cut down trees, mutilated the golden cedar I planted so it will never be tall, in that they cut off the crown, decimated the sumac, which was glorious in bloom and five stories high, destroyed the apricot tree, which gave wizend looking fruit but they made the best compote I have ever made. It's just gone forever.

So the hedgehog has no home. And I get stuck looking at things that are so idiotic, it's depressing. And the urban animals usually tend to be of the human variety.