It occurs to me that here in Moreno Valley we live among animals, moreso than other places I've been. Dogs roam the neighborhood untethered, there are stray cats all over the place, birds frequently show up dead in the yard, and our house is constantly inundated with bugs of various shapes and sizes. Oh, and the owl in the fucking tree.
In some cases we're benevolent. We took two wretched kittens from the yard into our house, and gave them pretentious names. Now, they think they own the place. But it's not all bad. After all, how many other people get to experience the joy of coming home to find shredded, used feminine hygiene products near the backdoor? Yes, we have trashcans with lids; they figured out how to open them.
But, I really think the pressure of living with all these creatures is getting to Jessica. She's just now wrapping up a Mengele-ish experiment to see how long an earwig can live trapped inside a styptic pencil tube without food or water. (For those who are curious, I believe it's up to 3 weeks. Those bastards are tough.) It's actually rather horrific to think of it being trapped in an enclosed space with no sustinence and a stick of chemicals 20 times its body weight crushing it against the plastic from time to time when Jessica decides to prod the thing searching for signs of life.
