Bot Battle

The patient is recovering well, thank you.

After three days waiting out the heat, I was happy to be back on a roof Friday, especially when I got a string of phone calls from Darcy updating me on the horror show unfolding at home.

10:23 am, Darcy (slightly hysterical):

"I think Smarty got shot by a BB. She has a round hole, like a BB size, in her right flank. Poor baby. It's oozing puss. I don't know what to do. I knew we should never have let her outside."
My replies were steady and sympathetic. Underneath, though, I was churning with negative reactions.

1. Anger: i.e., "those Goddamn little punk ass kids with their BB guns, I'm gonna hunt them down, tie them up, and shoot 'em full of copper balls. See how they like it." At some point in the last few years, I have turned from funloving rulebreaker to old curmudgeon, a Mr. Roper type who can't abide the sight of neighborhood youth enjoying themselves.

These damn kids fill me with a Hulk-like rage on a near daily basis. Last week, it was they were setting off fireworks at 9 at night! A fricking month after the 4th of July! With my babies sleeping! The nerve.

And the little punk flying by my house, back and forth on one of those moronic gas powered stand-up scooter things! Ride a bike like I did you lazy little f---! You think you look cool on that toolmobile?! I fantasize about him being hit by garbage truck and spending high school in a coma. That'll teach you to wear a helmet, punk. Even worse, I have visions of leaping from behind my Montauk daisies and clotheslining the kid with a 2 by 4. I have problems, I know.

And that damn Scotty Heinze with his parties on the beach! Thanks to him half the underage drunk population in the county is walking right by my house at 2 AM! Leaving broken glass in the sand that could cut my dog's paws! And having fires on the beach that could burn down our bulkhead! I had to stop typing there for a second because my hands had involuntarily curled up into balls of rage! On any party night I lie in bed, dreaming of ways to bring their good times to a screeching halt. Most of the fantasies end up with me getting geared up in Rambo wear and crashing their little beach party with a

flamethrower.

And now these little bastard children had taken the offensive, they were shooting my animals! This was it. It was time to clean up this neighborhood, like a suburban Travis Bickle.

Someday, a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

You talkin' to me, kid?

I managed to hold off the dreams of ruthless vendetta, but I still told Darcy we had to go door to door until we found the shooter, and then...talk to their parents? Cane them? Who knows what?

2. Guilt: i.e., Smarty had only been on these Mean Streets for a couple of weeks now, and I was the one who sent the poor little kitty out into the big bad world before she was ready. For two years, Darcy was happy with her as an indoor cat. No fleas, no worries. But Smarty had been sitting by windows intensely tracking birds, without acknowledging that she had no chance to chase them. It seemed cruel to me, to deny the cat her one true passion of birding. Plus, maybe she could provide an organic solution to our mole problem. Darcy held out, haunted by the ghost of Vera, her last kitty, who was hit by a car ten years ago. Finally, after I insisted, Darcy let go and opened the door for Smarty, and now, thanks to me, she had a cap in her ass.

3. Fear: i.e., "Is this cat's ass going to bankrupt us?" No doubt Smarty would survive this, it was just a BB. Equally bankable was that Darcy would want to take her to the vet, to hear it from Dr. Z that Smarty would pull through. Dr. Z is a very nice man with a Long Island mortgage, a Long Island commercial rent, and probably a nice boat somewhere on Long Island Sound. I had visions of cat surgery, weeks in the cat ICU, a long list of kitty prescriptions to be filled and refilled. I reminded Darcy that I had $113 in my bank account, then told her to do what she deemed best. She is, after all, a doctor herself.

11:47 am, Darcy (slightly calmer):

"I looked closer at Smarty's hole, and it looks like there are two little holes inside the bigger one. I think maybe she was bit by a squirrel, or another cat, or something."

This was slightly better news, at least there I don't have to hunt down and torture a cold blooded cat shooter. The anger had abated, but the guilt, and the fear of the vet bill, had not. Darcy told me she has a 3 o'clock appointment with Dr. Z...Great. I hope he takes Master Card.

1:29 PM. Darcy (close to freaking out):

"So, my mom is here now, and we were holding Smarty down and looking at her wound, and, Oh My God, there was something moving in there. My mom saw it and started running around the room. Then I looked, and I saw it. It's all I can do not to puke right now. The two holes were two little eyes. It's like a worm or something."

Now it's all fear, plus a slight sense of relief that I am 50 miles from this freak show, and I cannot be asked to touch the cat or look at the worm inside of it myself. Darcy and I discuss the possibility that my sister, fresh back from Africa, has brought with her some exotic flesh eating worm plague that will devour us all: men, women, babies, and beasts. Charge whatever you want Dr. Z, just make this go away.

And he did. A 4:28 call on my way home confirmed that it was, in fact, a worm. The larvae of a bot fly, to be specific. Dr. Z saw it, knew exactly what it was (he sees them every couple of years or so), and he plucked it out with a tweezers. Bot flies, he explained, hang out near rabbit holes, and lay their eggs on rabbits and curious cats like Smarty. The larvae burrow into the flesh of the vector animal, wait a few weeks, then emerge. The two "holes" were the equivalent of nostrils. Bot flies don't normally infest humans in these parts, but they have been known to pop out of people in Central America.

A gross link to a pic of a larvae exiting a human.

An even grosser link of a bot larvae extracted from a kid's eye.

Gross, right? Dr. Z was impressed that Darcy didn't run around the room, arms aflailing, when she saw the worm. That's what 4 years of med school will do for you. I didn't even ask what he charged.

Smarty is fine, and we didn't have to quarantine my sister, or consult the CDC. The question was raised, however: Should Smarty be allowed to roam free, in a world full of punk ass kids, nasty varmints, and flesh eating insects? The answer lies in the title of the blog, my friends. Smarty, despite the risks, is playing outside and happier than ever.