I've made it clear, I'm sure, somewhere in this blog, that deer should be classified as rats on stilts. They're dirty little vermin carriers with tiny brains and blah blah - old story.
Well, if deer are the rats, then raccoons are the crackwhores of the mammalian group. The obese scavengers just circle around a place, poking their twtichy little noses around, staring with their black-rimmed eyes, growling that gutteral hiss back and forth at one another, and at whatever is their prey (read: pet food dish left outside or a garbage can they manage to tip over with the force of their disgusting, fat, furry heft). Then they swarm, waddling grumpily on their weirdly delicate feet, before noisily devouring their find, hissing some more, and then skulking off to the next rotten feast.
I used to think certain relatives of mine had anger management issues whenever they ranted about picking off some of the above-said creatures with a rifle back on the East Coast. But I'm starting to sympathize with them. I have some friendly acquaintences here who wistfully wax on about how they would love to see some deer in their neighborhood, and how cute are they, and it's all I can do to keep the spittle from flying when I try to calmly inform them that they are freaking nuts. You want ticks, lady? Maybe some rabies? No? Then how about a growing herd of increasingly aggressive pests? Tsk, the urban folk, they slay me.
Speaking of anger management, I have got to resolve my relatioship with Berkeley. The kids and I drove through this afternoon to grab some dinner before hitting the bookstore, and it occurred to me that, for all the hellth (no, I did not misspell) and well-being and karma and whatever other pathogens are supposedly flying through the air in the city limits, NO ONE looks healthy and happy. No one. Every damn person on the street this afternoon looked malnourished and a little grey, more than half of them sporting hunched backs and premature frown lines. The only healthy thing about everyone seemed to be their sense of self-importance. It started with the frazzle-haired, 90-pound harpie earth woman who yelled at me and my car for coming into her crosswalk (I had stopped, inching forward, yes, a little, in the hope of making a right-hand turn. There was no one waiting on the corner to cross as I approached, but she came from down the street, with the sole intent, it seems, of informing me that I was in the wrong). The people sauntering down Shattuck near the Gourmet Ghetto just looked like they needed a B-12 shot and an anti-depressant chaser. Everyone at Elephant Pharmacy needed about 12 ounces of red meat, and they circled the vitamin shelves like vultures while clutching tofu and candles. Despite their weakly appearances, however, they were all big enough to take up more than their share of space in the aisles and give me strong stares of disapproval as I tried to cart my two kidlets toward the cashier. I was so happy to get out of there, I almost forgot the milk that I came in for. Don't even get me started on the old, bitter hippie I encountered several weeks ago in Andronico's, who, apropos of nothing, walked by me in the produce section one day as the kids and I picked out grapes, and muttered "Goddamned yuppies." I had no idea bathing and combed hair embodied the upwardly mobile subset, mister. I apologize on behalf of clear-thinking, conscientious, compassionate, clean people everywhere when I say: You messed up your own muddled revolution. Nice diesel van you're driving. Smoke some more dope, and you'll feel better. Watch out for the munchies. There's a sale on organic chips in aisle seven.
Of course, I thought of all this many minutes after our encounter. At the time, I just thought: What a jackarse; can't you keep it to yourself when there are kids around? And why bring me down? I wasn't doing anything to you. But I said nothing. Luckily, my kids are too young to understand his inference; they just happily went on telling me all the fruits and vegetables they saw. But it ruined my morning, because I am insecure enough to let it. Power to the people, my bum. Stupid town. Why must you have good food, there?
After dinner, we headed toward the Borders in Emeryville, a weird, disconnected urban hamlet of about 8,000 people that nevertheless managed to grab all the retail Oakland wished it could have. The town is famous for two things - being built on what is essentially a toxic brownfield, and housing Pixar headquarters. For all its effort - a series of so-so to quite fashionable retail destinations and an inordinate amount of hip-looking, though shabbily-built condos - it has no sense of community, and yet, the people are so much nicer there. The kids - who had refused their naps today (I should have known, since they slept well yesterday) - were in rare form, chasing each other down through the aisles of the kids section while Kane yelled "THE WONDER OF BOOKS!" in between giggles. No, I don't know where he got it from. After vainly trying to use my calm voice, then following them in circles, I had had it, but the woman who they were running around was just smiling. When I scolded them and told them not to bother other people, she just smiled at me and shook her head, like: "Oh, it's okay." She was so not from That Town Which Shall Not Be Named.
