Chattanooga Pulse

I was easing down the 2400 block of 4th Avenue between the magical late hours when the folks who stand around doing nothing weren’t out, and the folks with jobs weren’t yet on the way to work.  The sidewalks and streets (things completely interchangeable to the former group) were empty and it was just me and the hum of my Crown Vic’s tires on the graded roadway.

It was a stretch of pavement that was perpetually under construction, a never-ending work project that in my mind validated my beliefs about the inherent corrosive nature that malt beverages and unemployment have on not just the human soul, but concrete and asphalt as well, and I loved it; it seemed safe somehow.  The area of the East Lake Courts was the heart of our patrol zone, and it felt like home plate in our perpetual game.

I was enjoying the last of the cool temperatures before winter gripped us fully by the throat when I caught something out of the corner of my eye on the corner of 4th Avenue and Foust Street that prompted me to slam on my anti-lock brakes and come to an unsatisfactorily slow stop.  (The loss of threshold braking and the occasional intentional skid for dramatic effect were a deep wound in modern street policing, but that’s fodder for another week.)  I threw the shifter into reverse and rolled back to the offending spot, and after a moment tense enough to cause me to unconsciously reach for my pistol, I blew a sigh of relief and deescalated to the point of throwing the shifter the rest of the way up and parking in the deserted roadway to step out and relax.

I thought I had seen an opossum under the arc sodium street lights, an unsightly creature that has no business on these corners.  Their long proboscis, needle-like teeth and dark beady eyes rest under what looks like an old man’s receding hairline and progress to no discernable neck, then straight into a fat body with a hideous hairless tail.  They best they can do to make up for this is by adding to their charm with nonstop waddling and an occasional hiss.

While I do respect them as North America’s only indigenous marsupial, I find them revolting and discourage their presence in the urban habitat.  It’s occurred to me on some particularly long nights that I might simply be jealous of not possessing a fleshy pocket of my own in which I could raise young and/or keep Gummi Bears at the perfect near-melted temperature (and potentially never lose a set of car keys again), but after an unusual amount of thought on the subject I very objectively believe that they freak me out and I’ll never be able to bond with them.  That said, thank God it was simply a huge project rat.

The rat I can grasp; the rat I can understand.  They share physical characteristics (and in such concentrated Section 8 areas, the size) of a opossum, but they just seem to fit in here, whereas the opossum is doomed to only roam woodland areas in hideous isolation.  Rats are scavengers, survivors, resilient, and they multiply in great numbers…much like police and the area natives themselves.

The rats knew this too; this terrier-sized one especially, since I was within two yards of him and he never flinched.  He was enjoying a bag of chips he held idly in one paw, and ate paw to mouth with the other.  I pulled out a tipped Black & Mild and he nodded an acknowledgement as we silently enjoyed the night together, him leaning against a street lamp, me leaned up against the rear of my car, curls of my cheap cigar smoke mixing nicely with the soft nibbling of his chips.  We parted ways with a final nod, and I moved on down the empty road.

While clearly disgusted, I wasn’t discriminating against the opossum.  I had also seen black bears off Dodds Avenue (“If located, do not engage the bear”, my supervisor had said; “Your weapons are useless against it.”  You could go your whole life waiting to use a line like that, the lucky bastard).  Coyotes also fairly littered the city, and just this week a 19-year-old folk singer was killed by coyotes in Nova Scotia.  (Google it, and know that in no way would Alex Teach laugh about picturing a folk singer being killed by coyotes.)  Humanity and the rats simply earned their place in the urban food chain and until I see a little more initiative, I just don’t think other forest creatures belong in East Lake.  If anything, for the animals’ own safety.

As for now, I think I think I’ll get off 4th Avenue and find a store somewhere; I have a craving for Gummi Bears for some reason.  But then I’m heading back.
I think that rat was selling “the weed”.

When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he is an occasional student at UTC, an up and coming carpenter, auto mechanic, prominent boating enthusiast, and spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.