It started with an ordinary fox running across a manicured lawn in a gated community…
It started with a fox running across a lawn.
That was all.
A fox, reddish and quick, moving from one patch of ornamental grass to another at daybreak, doing exactly what foxes had done long before Gull Fence Island acquired gates, security codes, homeowners’ associations, irrigation systems, and men with three trucks.
Marg Rurtin saw it from her kitchen window.
She knew in her heart it was the dreaded coyote.
Lots of women and men got attention talking about coyotes in town and the next town over and at church.
By bedtime, her husband Roger discussed thoughtfully how it was probably a hybrid.
He shared this online.
By morning, there was concern.
The story was repeated, and a repeated story became true, and the truest of the true feelings was that hybrids were populating the local woods and moving into town to eat the rats! But they were more likely to eat their little dogs and cats and bite babies!
Concern, or as some could call it, fear-based-attention-seeking behavior, was one of Gull Fence Island’s most renewable resources. It was actually a self-reinforcing economy. It worked wonders on the fear-based-attention-seeking personality type, which was also self-reinforcing. It was glorious! God-sent! Praise the LORD for the bounty!
And the emotional labor was done by people like Marg without even having to be asked!
Marg, like Roger, posted from her platform of “concerned good citizen” that everyone should keep their dear beloved furbabies inside. Roger, for his miraculous contribution, grumbled online, at the barber shop, and at the men’s church social that he had always said the government wildlife people were letting things get out of hand by binding their hands.
“We can’t protect ourselves anymore or our loved ones.”
Sandy remembered hearing something near her trash cans three nights before. Judy found a tuft of coarse hair in some bushes and placed it in a sandwich bag. The two Karens agreed.
“It looks like something was eaten,” she said.
They clasped their crosses and thought of their dear sweet furbabies in the jaws of a wild snarling beast their husbands were forbidden from shooting by the big bad government overreach.
Only the hair was not a furbaby’s, not how they thought it was.
It was the golden retriever mix’s fur.
It was only Sully’s hair, a large shepherd mix of uncomplicated desires, who was actually more golden and lab, but everyone agreed he must be a danger, so he had to be the scariest shepherd breed…the one the military used.
Sully, for his part in their narrative, had been scratching himself against the bushes after rolling in something dead near the marina.
The real truth of the matter, otherwise known as information, did not travel nearly as far as the sandwich bag, also information.
Then Sandy’s cat disappeared.
The coyote had gotten it.
Everyone agreed, and that too became information. Irrefutable. Uncontested.
Even when the cat returned two days later considerably fatter than when he left, having discovered a part-time position in a feral cat colony behind the bait shop.
Sandy was relieved and conveniently forgot she told her mahjong group her cat was killed by a coyote, just like she forgot to correct her narrative about the water moccasin in the pond they got rid of, only because they didn’t know how to take care of garden ponds, and this offended her and Roger’s sensibilities.
They were morally, intellectually, spiritually, empirically, undeniably, and reliably GOOD PEOPLE!
Thus the faux coyote retained the faux kill in the emotional consciousness of the neighborhood.
Soon the children knew about it.
“There’s a coyote where we live,” one child announced at school. Then later there were “coyotes,” plural, when at lunch, having not got enough attention the first time he spoke up.
“It killed our cat,” another said.
This didn’t get enough attention either.
“They’re part wolf and they killed all the cats on my street,” said a third.
THIS got the level of attention desired.
The adults turned their heads.
“Coyotes are getting bad,” said the janitor to the only male teacher in the hallway, and therefore the only one he wanted attention from to help with his status and feeling of authority in a school with too many chatty Cathies.
One of the Cathies overheard the male teacher and the male janitor.
“They really are,” she said, and she knew this was true if the males were talking.
She never realized they had been talking about what they overheard imaginative attention-seeking children saying in a lunchroom of loud noises and stresses, which had been informed by grandparents who had feelings and narratives that helped keep them relevant, informed, and in the role of “good people.”
And so an animal that had never existed traveled farther than the ordinary fox ever had.
Meanwhile, the island got “safer.”
The tree service removed six pines because predators might use the wooded edge for cover.
The pest-control company sold several new contracts after rumors began about rats.
The rats had started as squirrels.
The squirrels had become roof rats by Tuesday and wharf rats by Thursday. By Saturday they were Russian ship rats and were chewing through electrical wires all over the island, though no one could produce a single chewed wire.
The electrician installed floodlights.
The security company installed cameras.
Motion detectors appeared on garages.
A man two streets over bought another rifle.
The gun shop sold ammunition.
A fencing contractor recommended closing several gaps underneath privacy fences.
A local handyman began advertising predator-resistant trash enclosures.
Everyone was doing their part.
The peculiar thing about the Flavor and Feel Economy was that every precaution became evidence that the danger had been real.
Why else would so many people be installing cameras?
Why else would the trees need to come down?
Why else would Roger have bought ammunition?
Why else would everyone be talking about it?
The story created the spending.
The spending authenticated the story.
Marg, meanwhile, became increasingly important in her social group.
People commented on her Fakebook post about noises they heard, shadows they saw, electrical wires that stopped working.
They sent her photographs of paw prints.
They asked what she thought.
Marg usually thought coyote.
She handed it to her husband, who had tracked their son to a remote bonfire one summer to do some underage drinking on the beach.
He said hybrid.
Could have been a dog paw or a fox paw, so obviously it was one of those dangerous hybrids.
He had clicked on a post about them just yesterday and his feed had two more stories about them today, so obviously it was a growing problem.
Once, after three glasses of Riesling, Marg suggested, what if there were mountain lions or bears swimming across and coming to the island?
Roger said that was unlikely.
Marg did not appreciate being corrected in her own bathrobe.
She suggested they remove their traditional grill and get a stainless one with a propane hookup.
Less mess and less chance to attract bears and mountain lions who could smell the drippings of a traditional grill from miles away, inspiring them to jump in the water, paddle for miles, and come have a picnic on your porch, even using your hot tub in winter to warm up.
The ordinary fox continued crossing the neighborhood several evenings a week.
He ate mice.
And moles.
And shrews.
And other small nutria.
The coyotes farther inland ate mice, slow or distracted rabbits, and whatever else presented itself that didn’t put up too much fight.
The cats held meetings behind the bait shop.
The squirrels continued running between trees despite their growing reputation as organized Russian wharf rats.
None of the animals understood that they had become an economic epicenter because what was the economic epicenter was the fear-based-attention-seeking behavior of people like Marg, Judy, the Karens, and Roger, as well as some children.
One afternoon, a cat, Sully the hybrid dog, also known as an ordinary mixed-breed dog, and a gray squirrel happened to occupy the same corner of a yard.
The cat sat beneath an oak licking one shoulder.
Sully lay in the grass, exhausted from having recently barked at absolutely nothing for two minutes straight, which is forever in annoyed pet-owner time.
The squirrel sat on an oak tree branch overhead chewing a pinecone he had found on the other side of the yard but, for no particularly discernible reason, carried up into the oak tree to gnaw.
“They think you’re dead,” Sully told the cat.
“Who? Sandy still feeds me. Marg still pets me. The Karens call me a good furbaby.”
“But they also think a coyote ate you.”
“You mean they feel a cat was eaten by a hybrid. I’m no longer a part of the narrative. Merely an…artifact.”
He smiled at his thoughtfulness and careful word choices.
Sully didn’t notice.
“But you’re here.”
The cat stopped licking himself.
“I am aware of that.”
Sully cocked his head like he did when he heard the phone ring or the fire engine race down the main road.
The squirrel leaned down.
“They think I’m a rat.”
The cat looked up.
“That seems unlikely.”
“They’ve taken out three more trees because of me.”
He twitched his tail emphatically.
“They think me and my brotherens are Russian Wharf Rats!”
He tittered at that.
Sully wagged his tail.
“Trees come down, trucks come.”
Neither animal responded.
Sully just loved trucks.
“The whole thing began with a fox,” said the cat.
The squirrel nodded.
“I know the fox.”
“Dangerous?”
“He is terrified of garden hoses.”
They sat quietly for a moment.
Across the street, Marg was telling someone that coyotes had learned to avoid the cameras.
“That’s why we don’t have footage,” she explained. “They smell our dogs and stay away.”
“But if they stay away because of our dogs, then what’s the fuss about?”
Marg felt like she felt when Roger corrected her.
She decided this woman would NOT be invited to stand with her at the tree lighting!
She would also delete any and all connections to her.
She would erase the woman socially.
She had done it before and she would do it again.
The drama didn’t affect the cat, the squirrel, or the hybrid, I mean mixed-breed, dog’s feelings.
They continued instead to have thoughts.
“So their lack of evidence is now evidence?”
“Apparently,” said the squirrel.
“But also, there is evidence because they are talking about it.”
“And posting it.”
“Fence posts?”
“In a manner. There are these electric things they fix things to, and by fixing them, they become facts and evidence.”
Sully rolled onto his back.
“I saw a deer yesterday.”
The cat and squirrel stared at him.
“What?”
“You did not.”
“I could have. Tomorrow I’m going to see a burglar or a bear in the driveway and bark like mad.”
He rolled in scat happily, thinking of the day he would have tomorrow.
Then a window slid open in the house behind them.
A boy’s voice came through.
Marg’s grandson.
He had been listening.
To his grandparents.
Obviously no one can listen to animals and animals don’t have thoughts even if they could speak.
That would be satanic.
Shame on you for believing for one second I might imply a boy heard the thoughts of animals.
AS I WAS SAYING…
The grandson had heard about predators and vermin and protecting property.
He had heard Roger say that people had forgotten how to take care of things themselves and BIG GOVERNMENT WAS MAKING IT HARDER.
He had heard the adults laugh about government wildlife people and smarty-pants environmentalists who created environmental problems, solved nothing, and made it harder for country boys to survive.
He had watched videos on his tablet.
He knew that shooting vermin was useful and exciting.
MOST importantly, he knew adults praised you for it.
It was beneficial to your social status.
He would feel Grandpa’s pride and Grandma’s love, and that would translate into more ammunition and gear come Christmas.
And all this was flooding his nervous system as he opened the window and pointed his BB gun at the Russian Wharf Rat.
The squirrel froze.
The squirrel closed his eyes.
“Oh fuck.”
The cat vanished under the fence.
He had no intention of being misidentified into somebody else’s story.
Sully sprang to his feet, tail hammering happily against his sides.
“SHOOT! SHOOT!” he barked!
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sully! I thought we were pals!” said the squirrel.
A gun means truck.
Truck means hunting.
And hunting, as far as Sully understood it, according to his lab girlfriend Lilly Girl, consisted almost entirely of running through brush, howling at nothing, pissing on everything, shitting wherever you want, and eventually being lifted muddy and ecstatic into the back to drive with the wind in your ears.
His favorite activity.
The squirrel leapt to the next tree.
Pop.
Pop.
“I GOT A SOCIALIST WHARF RAT, GRANDPA!”
“GOOD BOY!”
He got nothing but a trip later to the hunt and feed store to bask in the glow of the new story Grandpa would have, about how his grandson shot a bunch of wharf rats and saved him $1,000 from having to call that damn pest-control company, who were good-for-nothings, shot nothing, and told him how they were overregulated and couldn’t use real poisons like back in the day.
Behind him, Gull Fence Island remained safe, meaning nothing had changed one way or another.
Not one damn thing.
Except another generation was poised to be gun enthusiasts basking in the glow of a self-reinforcing, attention-seeking, fear-based economy.
It was glorious!
What is that? Who am I, you ask? Me? Oh, I’m just the narrator. A literary device. A type of archetype and artifact. A condescending, disembodied nobody with excellent timing and no skin in the game. I watch. I explain. I interrupt. I overexplain. And, naturally, I benefit from the same attention-seeking economy as everyone else. It doesn’t pay to be nice. It doesn’t even particularly pay to be right. It pays to be interesting. It pays to be alarming. It pays to make you keep reading. So really, Marg and I aren’t so different. Not even Roger, terrible as that is to admit. We are all archetypes and artifacts, carrying whatever story keeps us useful. Marg has her coyotes and, on especially productive days, illegal immigrants. Roger has hybrids and fentanyl strapped to the backs of illegals crossing some invisible horizon. The gun stores have Big Government. Big Government now has Big Government, illegals, fentanyl, and gun-toting citizens who are also unstable, frightened, heavily armed, and certain someone else started it. Everyone gets a villain. You get a villain. You get a villain. And even YOU get a villain. And better yet, everyone gets a story. Everyone gets to matter. Me? I get you. Goodnight children.
