By Chaz Martin
It’s time for a drastic reappraisal of the situation. Bands of gun-toting sharks have been dicing their way across the Florida coast, lured by tourists who may have unknowingly purchased C.K. Chum perfume. While the past summer’s rise in sea attacks is now public knowledge, you may not be aware that the sharks in question are making their way up the Mississippi Delta, and through every port where chubby white legs dangle in slow motion. The Ohio River now has a saline level high enough to support deep sea life, thanks to the flotsam of salted pretzels dumped after the Kentucky State Fair. They are coming to town, and may soon begin leaping with open jaws at motorists who pass above on the 65 Bridge.
The fact that the shoreline is a good fifteen blocks from my hideout in Old Louisville is irrelevant, because a regiment of bats has made camp in the attic above this very apartment. It seems indeed that mother nature is pressing on all sides. Prior to this writing, a sleep held me throughout the afternoon. I was lulled into blissful unconsciousness by a cool breeze that sent a signal (by way of an open window) that the summer is finally rolling out. I did not know that this apparent peace was nothing more than a ploy, designed by the bats to send down a dispatch-a spy to map the apartment’s layout and find vulnerable locations to attack.
I awoke to the screams of the couple in the next room. I thought that a middle-aged vagrant had perhaps broken in, so I grabbed a thick, metal lamp and proceeded down the hallway to my roommate’s clamor. I found him swinging wildly at the thing with a rolled up copy of this newspaper. The redhead that he defended was huddled under a canopy of blankets, as the flying mouse dive-bombed her repeatedly, brushing the top of the bed through heavy fire. The seeming terror of the girl was suddenly reversed when she sprung up from her covering and caught her enemy in a Star Wars comforter, pinning it down and beating it with panting fists.
This incident, while it may appear to be a common one (and unrelated to the recent frenzy of shark militancy), is most likely just as it seems: a local, isolated event involving a young couple and a bat. However, the hypothesis may be raised that the increasing level of savagery in America, captured both on the FOX network’s When Animals Attack and within the voyeuristic pages of Snitch, are indeed signs that we are reverting back to the boiling pitch of antiquity, when wild boars traversed the steppe and vultures continuously hung their circles above city-states. The weekly reports of massacres of and by nuclear families have become so common that they rarely escape the local news segment between the weather and celebrity birthdays. It seems that animalism has permeated into the civilian populace, stripping the social need for civility.
Might it be that the election of George W. Bush signals an era when warlords govern with cold mace and pots of boiling oil? Dick Cheney could supply the flaming pitch, left over from when he directed the Halliburton Oil Company during a mid-1990’s interim between Republican assignments. Perhaps the rash of shark attacks and dive-bombing bats are the precursors to the Bush Administration’s consolidation of power.
But perhaps, as we may hope, the bitings along the Florida Coast and the aerial raids in Old Louisville are not the plot of a CIA sub-agency, with designs to thin out the proletariat. There is a slight chance that it is something more elusive. The world has shifted out of balance; a Kioto agreement on greenhouse gas has been replaced by a missile defense shield, a treaty against biological warfare has been supplanted by steel pumps in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Perhaps it is the madness of our American course that has elicited savagery from the natural world, just as Pharaoh was pressed by locusts, frogs, and a Nile that flowed red.
Yes, something is terribly wrong, and the wild dogs won’t be far behind. This is most clearly apparent when a table of six leaves an undisclosed restaurant without giving their waiter a tip. The DOGS know where you are, you compassionate conservative bastards, who think that $2.13 will get someone through a year of school. Yes, the natural world is a bit miffed at these current players in the game of life. Its time to shape up or the Great Spirit will begin fanging his muskrats and badgers. Then, not even Dick Cheney will be able to escape the ultimate deluge of acid rain and rabid pigeons. Even the Oxmoor Aristocrats will be unable to hide, who had for so long supplied apathy through brand-named safety and a life where the colors blur into an egocentric shade of brown.
Chaz Martin is a senior history major and a columnist for The Louisville Cardinal.
