Friday, June 20, 2014

Cougar Monitor

There is something about ambiguous product names that makes me crazy. Like, baby wipes, I get it - clearly they are wipes for babies, not wipes made of babies. That's easy. But it took me forever to work up the courage to read the label on the bottle of fish sauce and see whether it was sauce for fish or sauce of fish. (Spoiler alert: it's of fish. Fermented fish. Ick.) And clam juice? Like, how the heck does one juice clams? But there it is, hidden in the fine print, presumably because that is just so damn gross that it can't be advertised directly in the name (e.g., Juice of Clams).

It seems really quite immoral that companies are allowed on one hand to advertise Made With Real Fruit Juice! in big bold print to trick stupid people into thinking that gummy candies are ever anything even close to being "fruit", yet on the other hand keep the whole "we have squeezed clams for your dining pleasure" business on the down low. Those companies probably all have some sneaky wordsmith on board, fine-printing their way straight to the bank. What kind of jerk makes a living writing weasel words to give the dubious products of big corporations a veneer of wholesomeness? I mean, not me, that's for sure...

Ahem.

So I was out doing some field work this past week - alone (my fave!) - when I got an emergency stand down call from the office: "There's been a cougar sighting 30 miles away - we're sending someone out to escort you around. Just wait in your truck until they get there."

Multiple ironies are woven into this little nugget. The painfully obvious: unless that particular cougar was a serial killer who planned on hitching a ride to my site to do away with me that very afternoon, the likelihood of my being eaten by a cougar had not increased at all by virtue of someone having laid eyes on one 30 miles away.

Secondly, it had only been a few minutes since I had hunkered down for a snack of celery sticks and peanut butter and pondered how pleasant it was to not be working in bear country where you have to think about actively making yourself seem not-delicious - oh yeah. Cougars too. Whoops.

And finally, who did they send out to act as Cougar Monitor for this middle-aged lady but a cute li'l 20-year-old boy.

Monitor for... or monitor of? The name reveals naught.

1 comment:

  1. Sequel: Things got even more meta the next day when they sent another middle-aged lady out as my cougar monitor.

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