If it were a painting, it would be called something like "Meditations on 21st Century Real Estate: Gray Study"

BLOT: (21 May 2014 - 06:04:34 PM)

If it were a painting, it would be called something like "Meditations on 21st Century Real Estate: Gray Study"

Walking to work on Monday, I spotted a real estate sign. Since I walk through a few residential neighborhoods, I see a lot of them, but this one is a special case. Here is a really crappy picture of it I took with my phone camera (identifying information removed):

Once again, my aging cell phone has rendered a picture that looks vaguely like early 90s home video footage used to record a crime, but pay attention to the shoddy yellow circle I hastily flung on there. That weird lump? That's a dead cat. In the ancient riddle of "Which came first, the dead cat or the real estate sign?," which do you suppose to be the right answer?

About three weeks ago, maybe four now, after a night of heavy rains, the poor feline was there on the walkway, in a puddle of water, and it was already rancid. I still don't know if it drowned because it tried hiding out in a gutter or it was killed by something or if it just died, right there, but it by the time I first spotted it, it was partially melted and very fly infested, and stank like the damned. And as bad as it smelled from the road (about 10-15 feet away), it had to be even worse for the house. Every day I've walked to work, since then, it has been a little more decayed, and a bit rancid on the warmer afternoons, and not moved an inch.

The real estate sign showed up this past weekend. That cat corpse is maybe five feet from it, quite potent, and there is a trash can something like twenty feet away. This means the person that put that sign up walked along that path, right next to the dead cat, put the sign up, and then walked away. This is a transaction involving thousands of dollars, at least tens-of and maybe hundreds-of, and it wasn't worth their time to move the fetid carrion twenty feet.

It might just be a metaphor.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: May 2014