And the hellscape just keeps getting hellscapier

A few weeks ago, I saw a YouTube clip of a giant rat climbing a pole in a NYC subway car.

So okay. Maybe it wasn’t a giant rat, just a plane old rat. But any rat climbing a subway car pole is going to appear to be giant. At least to me.

I haven’t been on a NYC subway in a few years, but I’m no stranger to the system.

Sometimes, on our frequent trips to NYC, my husband and I would jump on just for the hell of it. One of our favorites: the Crosstown Shuttle.

But from here on out, I think I’ll be taking a pass. Or an Uber. One thing to have a rat cross your path when you’re out for a stroll. The price you pay for living in a city. But no way do I want to see a rat scurrying around a subway car, shimmying up a pole.

At least those of us who live in northern climes don’t have to worry abut alligators. This I only have to do on behalf of my cousin Ellen, a Chicagoan, who spends half of the year in Florida, in a lovely community that has been known to have an occasional alligator prowling around.

I also just started watching Bloodline, a Netflix series that takes place in Florida. I am not afraid to say that when the “thing” in the mandrake grove turned out to be dead woman and not an alligator, I breathed a sigh of relief.

But, thanks to a facetious post by some police officers in Tennessee, there’s a new fear in town: alligators on meth.

What happened was the the cops arrested a fellow who was trying to flush methamphetamines down his toilet. They then put out a folksy warning:

“This Folks…please don’t flush your drugs m’kay (sic). When you send something down the sewer pipe it ends up in our retention ponds for processing before it is sent down stream. Now our sewer guys take great pride in releasing water that is cleaner than what is in the creek, but they are not really prepared for meth."

"Ducks, Geese, and other fowl frequent our treatment ponds and we shudder to think what one all hyped up on meth would do. Furthermore, if it made it far enough we could create meth-gators in Shoal Creek and the Tennessee River down in North Alabama. They’ve had enough methed up animals the past few weeks without our help. So, if you need to dispose of your drugs just give us a call and we will make sure they are disposed of in the proper way.” (Source: al.com)

The “methed up animals” referred to may have just been a party of one. A few years ago, Alabama had a little sitch on their hands: a drug dealer accused of feeding his pet attack squirrel meth to make it aggressive.

Pet. Attack. Squirrel. How do you parse that one?

Anyway, the fellow claimed he knew better than to feed his pet attack squirrel meth because it might kill it. No such conscience, apparently, about what meth does to humans.

But there are, apparently, plenty of instances of animals on meth, especially dogs. And in Australia, a shelter was coping with a meth- addled python. Not to mention that I came across a link – which I a) did not click on, and b) will not include here, to “Cute Animals on CRYSTAL METH – YouTube.”

I don’t know about meth, but I do know from life experience that there are certain drugs that you are not supposed to flush down the toilet to keep them out of the water supply.

When my husband was on home hospice, we had a CARE Package of drugs that was delivered as part of the deal so that you’d have them on hand for the end-of-life stage. I don’t remember what all was in it, other than Haldol and Morphine.

In any event, we never used the contents of the CARE Package, as by the time Jim was in the final stages of his life, he was in a hospice-hospice situation, where they took care of the drugs.

So, there I was after Jim’s death, with a fridge well-stocked with drugs I didn’t want to have around.

What to do, what to do?

The FDA provides a list of flushable drugs, and I believe that Morphine was on it. But some of what we had kicking around, from both the CARE Package and whatever prescriptions Jim was on, couldn’t be flushed. The advice was to toss them in the garbage, but to make sure that they were wrapped up in coffee grounds so that rats, squirrels (attack or otherwise), raccoons, and assorted other vermin wouldn’t get into them. (Living in Boston, there were no worries about alligators…)

I don’t drink coffee, but the Starbucks on the corner was happy to supply me with three bags full of coffee grounds.

Down went some of the drugs; out went the others.

As for flushing meth, whether those cops in Tennessee were just being tongue in cheek, or there really is something to meth entering the water supply, let’s just say I am plenty happy that I don’t have to live in fear of alligator meth heads.

The hellscape does just seem to keep getting hellscapier, does it not?