Covid, Smoke and now...... WOLVES?!?

It’s been months since my last post. In some ways it seems a long time, in other ways not very long at all. Covid cases are once again on the rise.

 My wife and decided in June it was safe enough to maybe isolate at our cottage on Gambier Island in Howe Sound, about an hour’s travel from our home here in South Surrey. We decided to hunker down there. We had so much stuff that we had to charter a water taxi to take it all over.

 

We figured we’d be safe there. Wrong! Now there’s a new threat: wolves. Yes, you read that right: wolves. The first indication that there was something new on the island was the scat. For those of you who don’t know what scat is it’s basically a typo for shit. I knew it might be wolf poo when I first saw it on the path as it contained bits of red fabric and pieces of a picnic basket. My fears were confirmed when our neighbours trail cam picked up numerous shots of them posing behind his cottage. The good news is that they appear to be Covid aware wolves as they are social distancing.  It appears that there’s now a litter of wolf pups.  My granddaughters are pressuring me to get them one.  I told them I’d need help.  They’d have to dress up like Little Red Riding Hood.  When the wolfs come up to grab the picnic basket they can reach down and grab a pup, put it into the basket and run over to me.  They seem to have lost their enthusiasm for a wolf pup.  Don’t understand it.

 I like to hike every morning, but now I take a can of bear spray. I’ve never had to use it, and my friend Dave advised me not to use it under any circumstances. “Why?” I asked. “Are you afraid of the damage it will do to wildlife?” “No,” he replied. “I’ve watched you put on mosquito spray. Half the time you have the nozzle facing the wrong way and spray yourself in the face.”

 So we packed up and came home – just in time for the smoke. I awoke the other day to be informed we tied Portland Oregon for the worst air quality on earth! The air quality is so bad you have to chew it before you inhale it. The good news is that the weather is supposed to break soon and the winds will shift from the South to the West. I’m just waiting until they swing all the way north and instead of bringing hot sticky smokey weather from California will bring icy cold smokey weather from Siberia that are just as bad or worse than the fires down south. 

We’ve been very smug here in BC about the wonderful way that the NDP government and Dr. Bonnie were handling Covid. In June we were down to single digits – not of deaths – but cases. Imagine less than 10 cases a day! Today the count is 166 cases and growing. So much for being nice and kind. It’s time to take the gloves off! Time to get tough! They’ve just started to fine scofflaws. Is it working? No. One idiot had a party. The cops warned him twice BEFORE handing him a thousand dollar fine. Did it work? Not at all. He had ANOTHER party the next night. He doesn’t care. He’s NEVER going to pay the fines, and if the government is as aggressive about collecting COVID fines as they are traffic fines, he’ll never have to pay. 

I have a better idea. One I guarantee will work. It worked in medieval times and it will work now. It’s tried and true: Stocks. Public humiliation works! 

Lock the scoffers into the stocks and invite passerbys to toss fruit and vegetables that have been rejected by the Food Bank at them. (Masks will be mandatory and they will have to stand on the designated spots). Show it on the evening news. I guarantee they won’t do it again. 

I think the time for niceness is done. Dr. Bonnie just doesn’t have the backbone. You all remember your elementary school teachers (other than grade one – we all loved our grade one teachers. It’s the ones that came later). The ones that always tried the kindness routine only got away with it for so long – until some students (me) realized they had no backbone and wouldn’t send me to the office if I stood up in class and dropped my pants and mooned her. These teachers usually lasted about one term before they ran screaming out into the parking lot, never to return. 

It’s time for someone new. Someone with a backbone and I have the perfect candidate: Nurse Ratched. For those of you who don’t recognize the name, here’s how Wikipedia describes her: 

Nurse Ratched (also known as "Big Nurse") is a the main antagonist of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, first featured in Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as well as the film. A cold, heartless tyrant, Nurse Ratched became the stereotype of the nurse as a battle-axe. 

You stick her up in front of the TV cameras to warn you if you’re caught without a mask, she’ll suck your brains out through your eyeballs. You don’t believe me? Just ask Jack Nicholson. 

Given the dramatic rise in cases, I think it’s only a matter of time until I get a call from a contact tracer telling me I may have been infected. 

“Hello, Is this Mr. Groberman?” “Yes. Who’s this?”

 “I’m a contact tracer from the Ministry of Health. You may have been exposed to Covid 19. I need a list of all your contacts over the last two weeks.”

 “Okay, last Friday I bought some deli at the supermarket. I had a mask on, as did the lady serving me.”

 “Okay, got that.”

 “… and on Tuesday I was at the liquor store. The lady there also had a mask on and was behind plexiglass.”

 LONG PAUSE 

“Yes, continue please Mr. Groberman.”

“That’s it.”

 “Two contacts?” 

“Yup, that’s my bubble.”

 So now I’m hunkering down again. To quote my good friend Dave when I asked him what he was doing lately. “Trying not to die.”

 I hope all of you are keeping safe, and wearing a mask and practicing social distancing… our I’ll sick Nurse Ratched on you.