California and the Rat War

Earlier today, "Circus," the exterminator, asked me if it is really worth dealing with rats the size of cantaloupes in order to live in Topanga. "Yes," I said, "this place reminds me that I am in California."

"But California is everywhere," he replied. "Even in New Hampshire, there is California."

I decided not to get into some existential discussion with a man carrying a Manhattan Project sized amount of deadly rat poison and besides, did not really care what was in New Hampshire nor why I would go there to see California. "Is your name really Circus?" I asked.
"They used to call me Captain Kool-Aid in college," he said.

I saw a small type of semi-truck yesterday morning- I'm not sure what the specific model of the truck was, but it was about the size of a $29.99 U-haul. On the side of the truck was an advertisement for the company the truck belonged to, "California Water Damage." Below the company name was a large picture of a woman, looking quite preturbed on one end of a couch, and her man, looking equally preturbed on the other side. The couch was sinking down into a rising flood of water, one side teetering on total furniture extinction. The woman, although dressed in a pair of slacks and pink blouse, was wearing a snorkel and fins. She had a dialogue bubble coming out of her ear that read "Honey, are you still sleeping?"

I stared at this portrait for a good five minutes wondering what the fuck it could possibly mean. I gave up. This is exactly how I felt when Circus told me that they used to call him Captain Kool-Aid in college. I wondered if perhaps he took a lot of acid and turned himself into some type of one man circus, juggling electric bananas above everyone's heads, riding a unicycle up a woman's face, splitting apples with an axe and spitting out the seeds with the velocity of machine gun bullets. I liked him a little more.

"Yeah, I had a rodent clean-up yesterday. Had to clean up a bunch of rat shit," he told me. He rubbed the whiskers on his chin, and shook out his shaggy hair.

Circus sprayed my house with deodorizer that smelled like champagne raisins and explained that the pungent scent of decaying rats mummifying in my ceiling would dissipate over the next few days. "The heat really speeds up the process," he said, "but makes the whole place smell like shit."

When he had finished, I walked him outside. He saw some aphids on my rose bushes, raised his can of poison and said, "I can take care of those right now." I declined his offer.

I stood in the driveway and watched Circus struggle with the manual transmission on his beaten pickup truck, attempting to reverse up the sharp incline just outside my home. He looked around at the tall oak and eucalyptus trees in the canyon, his clutch burning up, his truck rumbling and sputtering, and rolled down his window. "California?" he yelled to me.
"California," I replied.
"New Hampshire," he said. "Fuck it."

I waved goodbye to him like a close but distant friend as he sped down the canyon. I looked back up at the trees, thought of the coastline a few miles down the highway, my feet dangling over the edge of a continent, the Bear Republic, pure naked freedom in a gold rush land, and took a deep breath. California, goddammit. I want to live like California is supposed to feel.