\t\t\t\ta dead cat was the centerpiece of my day spent wandering the outer reaches
\nof Long Island City and venturing toward Jackson Heights. the cat was
\nfreshly dead, few flies or bugs circling, and it lay serenely and
\nsymmetrically on a mostly vacant stretch of sidewalk.<\/p>\n
i hate to say it but these casualties make for great photographs. those
\nwere my best shots of the day, i think, same as wehn i spotted a large,
\nfly-infested corpose of a cat near St. Michael’s Cemetery on July 4th. the
\nstillness of the creature and the abundant afternoon sunlight raining down
\non the busybody flies and other bodily scavengers made for a pretty
\nexcellent photo, is all i have to say. today’s dead cat photo op was less
\nabundant in activity, but it was something to think about.<\/p>\n
i don’t carry a cell phone around these days, so i could not call 311 to
\nreport it. i thought later that i could have wriktten down the street
\naddress of the dead cat, and report it to 311 from a payphone, but i
\ndidn’t think to do that. someone else will deal with it, i guess. it’s not
\nlike i had an opportunity to call ahead and *prevent* the cat from being
\nmauled by whatever killed it.<\/p>\n
the cat i saw on July 4th was too disgusting for me to look at. its face
\nwas frozen like lockjawed, and the legs extended from its body were
\nalready gnawed at and partly eaten. that cat looked fat, too, and old.
\ntoday’s cat was slender, and young. its legs were similarly extended,
\nas if all cats lie dead in the same sleeping position.<\/p>\n
today’s cat was not so repulsive to behold. freshly dead, the buzzards
\nwere nary circling, and the body still looked fresh. in fact, i first
\nthought that the little beast was sleeping when i first spotted it.<\/p>\n
a couple of years ago i spotted a dead chicken or rooster on Northern
\nBoulevard. it was in a shopping bag, near the curb, on the street. at
\nfirst glance i thought it was bizarre to see freshly dead livestock tossed
\ncurbside in an urban area. i later realized, though, that for as odd as it
\nlooked this was probably not as random as i thought. there are any number
\nof Pollo Vivo places in the area, where one can buy live or freshly dead
\npoultry and goats and other things. my guess regarding the animal i
\nspotted there in that bag is that it originated from one of those places,
\nand that someone dropped it off their bike or truck.<\/p>\n
in a related incident a few months ago i passed through Rainey Park and
\nnoticed a dead chicken or rooster at the base of a tree. it was in a
\nflower pot, and looked like a sacrifice. whatever it was, however it got
\nthere, it obviously was not uspposed to be there. it was not a pigeon or a
\ncrow, but a rooster or something (i don’t know my partly-decomposed
\nlivestock as well as perhaps i should). a week later i passed by the same
\nspot, and the piece of poultry was still there, even more decomposed than
\nthe week before. that time i got the attention of a couple of park
\nrangers, telling them that i was sorry to bother you but there is a dead
\nchicken or rooster or something over by that tree, in a flower pot, and
\nwhatever it is it ain’t supposed to be there. they responded quickly,
\ndriving their truck over to the tree that to which i had directed them.
\none of the rangers got out his rubber gloves and plastics baggies and
\ncommenced to remove the dead beast from the grounds.<\/p>\n
there was something funereal, procedural, and morbidly arch about the
\nprocession, this NYC Parks truck moving in on the dead body with a mix of
\ncuriosity and trepidation, the confusion perhaps muddled by understandable
\nuncertainty about my credibility, i being just some random dude new to
\nthem, as were they to me.<\/p>\n
today’s wander was good for the intake of sunlight. i have had notions of
\ntaking a trip up to Valhalla, to see the Kensico Cemetery. i’ve heard
\nabout it so much over the years that i should really see the dang place.
\nlots of fallen stars are there, including Rachmaninoff, Babe Ruth, Ayn
\nRand, and a bunch of others either at Kensico or the Gate of Heaven
\nCemetery, which is owned by the same diocese as Calvary here in Queens.<\/p>\n
i also have a .plan of sorts to go back to Daytona Beach. the property
\nthere has been up for sale for so many years now that I am curious to see
\nit, to see if it has sunk into shitholery, or if it really is just this
\nObamaconomy that halts investors from buying up properties like mine which
\nis up for sale at an absolute bargain price. and Daytona Beach is a cheap
\nvacation. 3 or 4 nights for ~$500, I think… it might be fun to check in
\non some of the places I used to see when i spent parts of my summers there
\nin school.<\/p>\n
as i recounted to a friend the other night, i had an encounter at an
\noyster bar in Daytona Beach that vaguely haunted me a couple of decades
\nlater. but that might not be suitable subject matter for the public
\nIntertubes, even if this site is blocked from legitimate search engines…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
a dead cat was the centerpiece of my day spent wandering the outer reaches of Long Island City and venturing toward Jackson Heights. the cat was freshly dead, few flies or bugs circling, and it lay serenely and symmetrically on a mostly vacant stretch of sidewalk. i hate to say it but these casualties make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-wanders","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}