“Police handling a property eviction found 10 goats, 25 pigeons and several bottles of unidentifiable liquid that forced calling in a hazardous materials team.”
---Asheville Citizen-Times 2.28.08
Is it just me, or does this seem un-newsworthy? Let’s be honest, if every time someone found 10 goats, 25 pigeons, and some bottles of weird liquid an article was written, the Asheville Citizen-Times would have to change its name to the Asheville Witch Brewing Chronicle.
I say, so what. I once kept three hamsters inside my breast pocket for a full week. I once filled my attic with squirrels on purpose, just because I like the noise. I once traded my wife for a handsome calf, and to fill the void, I let the calf sleep in the bed. People have animals, and they like to keep them close. Some people like to fill bottles with weird liquids, who cares?
Like most kids, I had to pee in bottles on long road trips. I also liked to keep the bottles. Some kids had rock or bug collections, but I had Mountain Dew bottles full of pee. It’s not weird. My therap---umm…my good friend, Dr. Swarthy, told me that it’s perfectly normal for me to still have 456 Mountain Dew bottles filled with my childhood urine lining the bookcases and shelves of my room. I tend to agree with him. When I feel down, I just pull one down—ah, March, 1962: trip to the Outer Banks. Brings back good memories. I drank two glasses of apple juice before we left the house that morning. The good old days. Bottles of pee = memories. Aristotle once said so.
All I’m saying is that I wish the newspapers would focus on things that are interesting, not average, run-of-the-mill, the-same-old-10-goat-25-pigeon story that everyone is already familiar with. I’ll bet money that there’s a team of five men (okay, there’s a woman too) down in the police lab, trying to figure out what’s in those bottles. Maybe its goat memories, mixed with a touch of pigeon love.
Frank Henry
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