Friday, October 07, 2005

Decomposition in (Fake)E Minor

Today was rainy, and I spent the afternoon sleeping with Tiger curled up beside me on the comforter. This is when I noticed that he has a somewhat fishy smell about him. It's not overbearing or entirely unpleasant, but it is noticeable. Maybe it's the cheap dry food I've been feeding him.

Rainy days bring out the smells of things more than other sorts of days. There's the lumps of dog crap on the front yard that the tenant never cleans up, the diaper bucket of my housemate's kid; there's the soybean factory down the street, the mold and fungi of the basement crypt, and there's my housemate's makeshift compost pile behind the decomposing shed in the back yard. All of these things combine to form a veritable potpourri of scent.

Last night the Slug of the Apocalypse was crawling toward the doorstep again. I keep returning the creature to the garden, but it keeps coming back and back, like a poltergeist. All these things must mean something, though I'm not sure what. Actually, the message is clear: time to move on.

2 comments:

Fivel said...

Have you tagged the slug to ensure it is the same one that keeps coming back?

Also, have you seen "Fly Away Home" -- this film may be relevant to your slug problem.

flatlander said...

I'm all out of slug tags, so it could very well be a team of invertebrates working in shifts. Animals have been known to do this throughout history, in an attempt to inspire poetically inclined souls to include them in their works. Keats' "Ode to a Nightengale", for instance, was inspired by a team of songbirds, working around the clock to subtly influence the poet's consciousness and thereby give birth to the immortal poem.

This is an interesting new area for academic research, and I'll get right on it once my Acme Slug Tags arrive in the post.

No I haven't seen the movie you mentioned. I think it's about Canada Geese, perhaps?