Laser Guns and Smelly Garbage

I went rooting around in my neighbor’s trash the other day in search of whatever they cooked that had made my apartment smell like a dead rhino’s intestines. I hoped to find the secret ingredient and buy it out from every grocery store in town, so it could never again be transformed into the devil’s goulash. I failed in my endeavor, but did find something interesting. At the bottom of the dumpster was, of all things, a laser gun.

An idealized version of what I look like rooting in a dumpster

You may be thinking, “Huh, a laser gun? Really?” To which I would say, you need to lay off the thinking a bit. It really isn’t doing you any favors. I gave up thinking in the mid 90s, and I can safely say that I don’t miss it a bit. Now I just react emotionally to whatever situation presents itself. This has backfired on occasion, like the time I drank half a bottle of Tobasco Sauce when I was drunk at Denny’s and then threw it up in the bathroom, but forgot I had drunk the Tobasco in the first place and believed I was throwing up blood, but on the whole, poor impulse control has served me well. Give it a shot.

Don't drink while drunk

So back to the laser gun…

Oh Yeahhh!!!!!!

I grabbed it, gleefully looking forward to blasting cars and Snuggies. I knew from watching reruns of Star Trek that your basic laser gun comes with a little switch that goes from stun to vaporize, but this one only one setting, and that was mutate. I looked around for the neighbor, but only found a straggly raccoon in the neighboring dumpster. The raccoon and I sat down for a while and discussed our options. We decided to draw juice box straws to see who would be the mutatee. I drew the short straw, but the raccoon, his name was Steve, thought the winner was the one who got to be mutated. Apparently the life of a dumpster diving raccoon isn’t as thrilling as everyone thinks it is. I happily acquiesced.


Steve walked ten feet away and stood there with his arms outspread, waiting for me to pull the trigger. I admit that I was a little apprehensive, but performed task. A red beam emanated from the gun and enveloped Steve. It quickly disappeared, and Steve vanished. In his place was a small bunny rabbit with a pink bow around its neck. The bunny was Steve, and he was furious. He wanted to be giant and ferocious. Instead he was tiny and cute. He demanded that I shoot him again. I suggested that things might only get worse, but he wouldn’t listen to reason.

The next three hours were not pleasant. Steve went from a rabbit to a weasel, and from a weasel to guinea pig. He told me to keep trying and the results were in sequence: a guppy, a toaster waffle, a meal worm, a fruit bat, a small block Chevy engine, a limp rutabaga, and back to a fruit bat. We stopped at the second fruit bat incarnation, and I recommended it might be the best we were gonna get. The beam from the gun was getting a little more faint with each successive blast, and it might stop working completely before we achieved an acceptable result. Steve just flapped his wings at me angrily, because his vocal chords were too small to talk. I took this to mean that we should carry on.

Seven blasts later, with a pollywog and a piano bench in the middle, Steve turned into a rhesus monkey. I looked at him with a hopeful squint. In response, Steve ran up and gave me a giant smelly monkey hug. I was incredibly relieved, because the laser gun was smoking pretty bad and the beam had become barely visible. I asked him how he possibly intended to get by as a monkey in the city, but he reminded me that as a monkey, he could break into second story houses and eat all their bananas. I was happy for Steve, and made just one request, to which he happily agreed.

A compressed view of Steve's evolution to a rhesus monkey

The next day, I was sitting at home drinking tequila and watching Jersey Shore when I heard the neighbors banging around in the kitchen. The god-awful smell started drifting through my living room, but I waited patiently. A shadow flitted by the window, and I heard a harsh buzzing sound. The putrid smell instantly changed to fresh baked cookies. Now I leave a fresh bunch of bananas on my deck every morning, and my home never smells like rhino intestines.

My buddy Steve