Playing Fair and Being Kind

I know it’s been awhile since I last wrote. I’ve had starts and stops and a few moments of hilarity thinking about what to write about. I just haven’t done it. Period. I have listed the things that should be written though and I will get to it.

As I drive I have at hand two water bottles and an assortment of snacks; pita chips and pistachio nuts along with the water bottles. Snack, sip, snack some more and sip again. It helps me to stay focused as I drive. Another habit I have to stay alert is to imagine, or rather, let my imagination travel its own course. Below is an example of my new interest, a type of writing called ‘magical reality’. It allows a series of events that go beyond reality to enter into a string of thoughts that make up a piece of writing. I’ll just go ahead and post the latest one. I think it is pretty good. Let me know if you agree or not.

Just to let you know, I have advanced from South Carolina to Florida and then to New Orleans; Katy, Texas; Lufkin, Texas; and now I am in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’ve been here a week and I have grown to love it. More will be revealed. O.K. Here is the story.

SEA MONKEYS

Recently I bought a pair of water bottles, the type that fit into loops of a fanny-pack belt for hiking. They are the kind that have a nipple on top of the screw-on lid. The nipple can be sucked or the bottle squeezed, or both, to get water. The system seems fool proof, spill proof, but not really and I’ll tell you why.

Each time I have used the bottles, and it doesn’t matter which one, when I get near to the bottom, water level wise, I see tiny bits of schmutz that are pale in color. I’ve wondered if there is a backwash event happening. I don’t think that I get sloppy and loose lipped enough to allow a bit of water to get sucked back into the bottle but there it is; tiny bits of stuff floating in the water. The tiny bits remind me of those sea monkeys that one can buy to put into a jar and feed and raise for a few weeks. They are some type of brine shrimp. However, when I had sea monkeys I could see them moving in the water. Over time they could be seen more clearly and one could detect the legs swimming. I thought they were quite entertaining. What was floating in the water bottles was not sea monkeys. I couldn’t make out what it was and I wasn’t convinced that it was backwash.

It happened one day after I’d been hiking through the land-trust woods just down the road from my house that I put the bottles on the counter of my kitchen next to the sinks. I showered and dressed and returned to rinse out and refill the water bottles. One was still full and clear but the other was down to less than a few inches of the bottom. There it was! I could see a few bits of pale colored schmutz floating around in the water that was left. I picked up the bottle to better examine the junk. Not much to see. All I could determine was that there, floating around in the water, were bits of something, barely visible to the naked eye, as they say. A thought occurred to me that I ought to leave that bottle right where it was to see what would develop overnight.

The next day the stuff in the bottle was larger by twice and each bit was beginning to show form. Nothing I could make out yet but there definitely were shapes to the bits of schmutz now. To be safe I stopped using the word “schmutz” because there seemed to be life abounding in the bottle and I didn’t want to accidentally insult even the tiniest bit of creation. Say what you will, I’m a sensitive guy. I placed the bottle near the back of the counter and left it for another day.

I forgot about the bottle for a few days but on the fourth day I remembered. When I picked up the bottle I was horrified to see several larger objects slowly swimming around in the shallow water in the bottom of the bottle. The damned things had stubby legs and heads! The color of the shell, or skin, had become purplish gray and one in particular was stalking the others. I figured out right away that these things had been growing and feeding off each other! There were only three creatures where before, when they were tiny and barely discernible, there were dozens. These three seemed to be the survivors. In the time it has taken to relate this the largest of the three cornered the other two and ate them. It was not pretty as you can imagine. There was a struggle and a fight to gain a hold and a type of bite that immobilized the weaker one. Several bites and the deed was done. Then the last one was dealt with in a similar fashion and it was all over. The lone survivor was a bruiser, so to speak. It was actively searching the remaining water in the bottom of the bottle for more to eat. I was shocked at what I had been carrying around in the bottle and sipping from.

It was actively searching the remaining water in the bottom of the bottle…

I unscrewed the cap from the bottle. As soon as the cap was off the ghastly thing leaped out of the water and hung by its stubby limbs to the rim. I backed away with no thought of preventing its escape if that was what it had on its mind. The thing leaped to the counter top and waddled to the edge of the sink. The sink was filled with warm soapy water and a few dishes. The creature sidled around to the second sink and tumbled in quickly. It grasped the strainer that was lying in the drain and shoved it aside. Quickly it slipped down past the drain into the pipe below. Gone! Just like that it was out of sight. I could hear scratching noises from the PVC pipes under the sink in the space below. There was a tumbling and clawing sound that shook the pipes and then there was no sound. The thing seemed to be below the traps and further down the drain under the house. I heard no more noise. I’m wondering if the creature was intending to go down the drain as an escape to the ocean. Little did it know that my drain system is a septic field that goes nowhere near the ocean.

I hope it stays lost in the drain field out there in the yard. I’d hate to think it could grow larger and gain more skills.

G. M. Goodwin

21 February 2016