Back during my undergrad years I once visited a friend of a friend at Casa Zimbabwe, a student co-op at UCBerkeley. It was one of the most amusing environments I've been in. Black egg crate foam had been nailed to the walls in places to ward off noise violations. Gapping holes lined the halls, spaced between bright swathes of graffiti. Bright orange traffic cones mingled with assorted litter on the floor. In the kitchen, dripping stalactites of curdled milk hung from plastic nozzles that dispensed the fluid. Looking at them I wondered how hungry I'd have to be, and how much I'd have to want a bowl of cereal, to use those things.
As my group of relatively square friends sat around discussing what to do that day the guy we were visiting chimed in, "I've got some Vodka," and pointed to an unmarked 5 gallon jug filled with something that very well might have been Vodka. It being ten in the morning, we passed. We were assured that if we waited till dark we could get some crack from the resident dealers, but we decided to pass on that too.
I guess things could have been worse. Casa Zimbabwe could have been infested with rabid bats.
Bats are pretty crazy, let me tell you. You don't see too many of them out in California, but when I was back in Rochester, NY, house-sitting for a professor, I had a couple of serious bat adventures. One night, when I was about to go to sleep, the cat began darting around like its tail was on fire. I started to hear a high-pitched squeaking. "Must be chasing a mouse," I figured. So I turned on the light, and way back in the corner of the room, as he ran for a split second behind the TV, I saw the cat chasing...a flying mouse!@#& Jesus Christ! They both ran into another room, and then I shut the door to the room, and listened. The cat was really doing a number in there; he must have been having a blast. After a couple of minutes of silence, I opened the door and the cat came out. I put some boxes in front of the door and decided to check for the dead bat in the morning. (Long story short: the bat was injured but not dead, and a tricky window opening allowed him to fly out of there the next night.)
ReplyDeleteLater that same summer, I was working on my paper when I suddenly heard the squeaky sound again. I looked over, and there was the cat, with a bat dangling in his mouth. "Hey! Look what I brought you!" his eyes seemed to say to me. "Holy shit, get that thing out of my face," I thought. I opened the front door and panicked. The bat slowly wobbled outside, but then the cat followed him. I had to spend twenty minutes chasing the cat in the pitch black night.
Never got any rabies, though.
My grandparent's cabin in the Sierra's sometimes had bats. You can see bats flying just above the range of streetlights and headlights throughout California, but I haven't heard of them going into buildings much. Maybe it's a different kind of bat?
ReplyDeleteHoly flying rodent, Batman. Was this a post inside of a post?
ReplyDeleteYoggoth, did I go with you on that trip? I remember going to a co-op in Berkley, but I think you went more than once. I remember those crazy conditions, and the fridge had a "surprise!" orange colored drink inside that was a mixture of about ten different liquids I think.
Good times.
Yep, you were there.
ReplyDeleteAnd here I was thinking that Berkeley was the pinnacle of education.
ReplyDeleteBerkeley is the pinnacle of something. If you are the sort of person that stays in your room or office studying all day then that might be education.
ReplyDeleteBerkley the town is kind of a cesspool; the university has lots of renowned scholars, but that doesn't necessarily equate to a good education.
ReplyDeleteHaha, the town of Berkeley isn't that bad compared to parts of Oakland and Richmond. Plus they have good food and great shopping! The Berkeley hills are actually pretty ritzy. The communist Beverley Hills.
ReplyDelete