Swing low, sweet Cadillac

There's an ancient white Cadillac hearse/station wagon/ambulance parked in front of my building, complete with siren and curtained back seat/corpse depository/mobile emergency room unit. It's owned by a local animal control firm which uses it to advertise their trapping services (and to cart away the remains, I suppose). We're talking large mammals here, animals that one could theoretically use for their fur, like bears or Dalmatians. Not Mr. Mouse nor Ms. Roach. It's so cool! If there's ever another coyote outbreak in Brooklyn, I know where to go. The best part are the bumper stickers. But they will have to wait for the digital camera.

Comments

[Syd Webb]

Apropos of nothing we have had two coffins go into storage in our garage the other week.

One of Beatrix's girlfriends had been playing the corpse of Mrs McLeavy - to rave reviews - in Joe Orton's play Loot. The two coffins had been used for the two acts, the second act taking place after the automotive mishap.

I'd like to think this is only a temporary state of affairs.

[Josh]

Does the vehicle have a cartoon picture of a large animal inside a red circle with a slash through it on its side? 'Cause that'd be *really* cool.

[Carlos]

Josh, yes, yes it does. (A raccoon, which I gather have infiltrated the Danubian watershed; and another beast, which I forget offhand, but will confirm later. *Not* Mr. Rat.)

And a minor correction: the amazing bumper stickers are on the hearse's associated pick-up truck, which also parks in the neighborhood. From memory, one of them says, "KIDS WHO HUNT AND TRAP DON'T MUG LITTLE OLD LADIES".

[Bernard Guerrero]

"A raccoon, which I gather have infiltrated the Danubian watershed"

Vicious little beasts. I once spent an entire night fending off a tribe of them trying to infiltrate the back of our M113. Came close to cranking up the engine, closing the ramp and buttoning the thing up tight; they're persistent little buggers.

[Carlos]

Josh, the other animal is a skunk.

I have no idea what Romanian mammals are analogous, if any. 'Raccoon' and 'skunk' come from Native American languages. The raccoon is a tough forager with mask-like markings on its face, nocturnal. It loves garbage cans. The skunk, black with white stripes down its tail, and produces a truly obnoxious sulfurous odor when threatened (or run over). It too loves garbage, but it's not as dextrous as the raccoon, which seems to be well on its way to developing hands and lockpicks. Flower, in the movie Bambi, was a skunk.