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

The Lifecycle of a Bobcat

There are dozens of fascinating stories in the news today, which is why I’ve opted to write about crayfish. Crayfish resemble lobsters with dwarfism, and many people believe them to be from the same family, that being “Large insect shaped monsters with pinchy hands that you would be terrified to see crawling out from behind your toilet, but taste mighty good when dipped in butter”. Other members of this family include crab, scorpions, and genetically mutated head lice. Crayfish, or “mudbugs” to you hipsters out there, are not a member of this family, however. They are actually the aquatic juvenile form of bobcats.

Future Bobcat

Now I’m sure plenty of you are waving your University of Phoenix diplomas and Wyotech certificates of completion and screaming, “I am a pseudo college graduate, and this is just plain false.” I’m sure you were top of class in sparkplug gapping, but, with all due respect, I don’t think classes in arc-welding or fetching coffee for the middle manager really qualifies you to weigh in on this. I, however, have spent literally dozens of minutes studying the life cycle of bobcats, and that clearly makes me the expert.

Bobcats only mate under a waxing gibbous moon occurring in spring, or when the female bobcat doesn’t have a headache, the latter being far less common. The female gives live birth to hundreds of little crayfish, but recoils in horror at the idea of nursing them, thereby becoming the only animal to avoid classification as a mammal by willfully opting out. After seeing her hideous offspring, the mother bounds off into the woods, furiously working on a good excuse for the next gibbous moon. This is the reason bobcats are afraid of water.

Lifecycle of a bobcat

The first minutes of a crayfish’s life are the most vulnerable. They have only minutes to crawl into the water to avoid being grabbed in handfuls by the incomprehensible residents of Louisiana hell bent on turning them into jambalaya to serve in Disneyland at the restaurant in The Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Once they make it to the water, however, theirs is an idyllic life spent pinching the toes of wading toddlers and acting as a delicacy for steelhead trout. Frequently they congregate around a hunk of old meat in a lobster trap and discuss politics. This typically ends in a trip to Disneyland.

Lifecycle of a Bobcat Interrupted

A crayfish has no idea it’s a baby bobcat until one day it wakes up and discovers that its claws have turned into furry arms with claws. The other crawfish usually look at him askance, but scuttle away when he bursts from his shell into a fully formed feline. Ideally this transformation takes place in shallow water. From that day forward, the bobcat keeps to land and looks forward to or dreads the coming of a spring gibbous moon, depending on their gender.

Disaster in the Making

Deer Pee and Owl Barf

My “action-pose” clam failed to sell, or even generate a single bid, at auction. I did get a helpful message from porcelainsquirrelfan232, who informed me that if she wanted a clam shell, she would just order a bowl of cioppino. She bookended that with several misspelled obscenities. I politely responded to let her know that my clam was quite the looker and had probably been in pretty high demand down around the clam beds. I mentioned that her cioppino clam was likely to be homely with a pock-marked shell. She responded with a fresh batch of obscenities. I offered to add the googly eyes. She hasn’t responded.


I’m surprised there wasn’t a market for my unique treasure, since a quick perusal of Ebay turns up current auctions for elk urine, owl pellets, and used womens underpants, all of which have bids in. The description for the underpants leads me to believe they’re not being marketed as a value driven alternative to Walmart.

Elk urine is wildly popular with people that like to shoot at deer, but usually repel them on account of smelling like Aqua Velva and salisbury steak. They slather deer pee all over their fluorescent orange jumpsuits to transform into invisible clouds of urine soaked elk death. The most desirable urine comes from female deer in heat (and, before you ask, yes it does have a pink label). Wearing this, hunters can pick off the unsuspecting elk bounding towards them with amorous intent. I like to think they apply this kind of urine by spritzing their wrists and gently rubbing it behind their ears.

At first glance, you might think owl pellets are actually owl poop, but then you would be wrong. It only takes a cursory examination of an owl’s aft end to realize passing one of those things rectally would be like an average person trying to crap out a tuba. If this were the case, owls would have disappeared from constipation weeks ago.

Owl Pellet

Owl

Constipated Owl Contemplating Extinction

Owl pellets are really owl barf, consisting of all the hair, bones, and flashy gold jewelry that an owl can’t digest after swallowing a mouse. People pay good money for these things so they can wack it like a piñata and find the goodies inside. Finding the parts to a complete mouse skeleton means you are A-1 top owl barf guy. A bag of owl pellets will set you back about $15.00. Slingshots on Ebay go for $5.