Oct. 16, 2004 - 4:44 p.m.

Dangerspouse Fleas Canada

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Not exactly timely, but here's Part-2 of my Canada Adventure....

(Brief recap: NewWifey(tm) and I flew to Vancouver, where we were detained at Customs for hours because I couldn't resist making an ill-advised joke about my reason for visiting. We lost our reserved rental car, dinner, and minds. Then it got worse.)

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During the taxi ride from the airport to our hotel on Granville Island I learned all about my shortcomings as a husband. NewWifey(tm) was still peeved, to put it mildly, at my indiscretion back at Custom's Jail, and she let me know about it even after we had checked in and turned on the Pay-per-Porn.

By the third hour NewWifey(tm)'s voice finally gave out. She had run though every expletive and invective she could think of in her native tongue, eventually resorting to an "English to French" phrasebook to continue her tirade in that language. She fell asleep with clenched teeth, fully clothed, as far from me on the king sized bed as she could manage. I finished watching "Debbie Duz Dishes" (a classic, with Nina Hartley!) then fell into a fitfull dream about singing onstage with Menudo. The usual.

The first order of business next morning was securing transportation. As mentioned previously, we were delayed so long in Customs that Avis gave away the little Toyota we had reserved. As it turned out there was some sort of convention in town, and NO ONE had a car left to rent.

Except one.

Four hundred and fifty dollars (US) plus a TEN GRAND "Collateral Hold" on our credit card later, and we drove off Vancouver's only exotic car rental lot in a 2004 Hummer H2.

The $10,000 was not actually charged to the card. We just had to sign the slip. They would only submit it if we tore the roof off by, say, recklessly trying to squeeze under any overpass less than 15 feet high. Have you ever piloted one of these behemoths? Aside from the instant magnification of your genitals, these things are so tall you practically need a Sherpa to help you ascend to the driver's seat. Seriously, who NEEDS a vehicle that was purposely built for anyone who's daily commute involves traversing Ayer's Rock?

Anyway, once we got NewWifey(tm)'s nosebleed under control and started rolling, the ride was suprisingly docile. You really do feel invincable perched 12 feet off the pavement, surrounded by enough rivetted steel to stop a SCUD. The only problem we had was that Vancouver is hilly in the extreme - a lot like San Francisco. Start going up some of those steep inclines in that Hummer and all you see is a very pictuesque panarama of cloud formations in front of you. Any hope of seeing pavement - or traffic - is lost under a 12 foot long hood after about a 4 degree tilt. Other than that (and the $45 worth of gas it sucked down every 20 miles) we had no complaints.

Having gotten over that initial hurdle, everything else the first day was cake. The food was great, the sights soul stirring, and the natives anything but restless. We both started to forget the horror that resulted from My Bad Joke the morning before. NewWifey(tm) even began talking to me in tones that did not raise blisters.

Have I mentioned that we have a cat?

We do. She's the cutest little orange tabby, who loves our Corgi to death and who rides around on my shoulders in between her frequent naps. She's the kitty I accidentally peed on when she unexpectedly leaped off my shoulders into the toilet. (I have an entry about that somewhere in my archives.)

She also has fleas, which I discovered the night before we left for Canada. When I woke that morning and tossed her off my head, my right forearm was itching like it had been branded. In the bathroom I saw a series of tiny red dots, and then, scampering among the forest of forearm hair...a flea! Son of a tiny bitch!!

Having had various beasts of the field as pets over the years I've become quite adept at quickly plucking vermin from my skin. In short order the offending flea was pinched between thumb and forefinger, then dispatched to a watery grave. Just in case there were others hiding among the thatches, I used my dog's anti-flea shampoo as a body wash in the shower. Then we left for the airport, secure in the knowledge that we weren't packing along any unwanted living baggage into one of the safest countries on earth.

Imagine my suprise then when at 2am on our second night at the Granville Inn, someone shot me in the ear with a .44 Magnum.

BLAMM!! Just like that!

I leaped straight up on the bed, standing naked (how I sleep), clutching the right side of my head. I thought NewWifey(tm) was gonna have to do a Jacky Kennedy and try to stuff my brains back into my head.

Then suddenly, two more shots -

BLAMM!! BLAMM!!

I dropped to my knees and doubled over, screaming and crying out to NewWifey(tm).

Thank god for Irish genes. NewWifey(tm) metabolizes alcohol so quickly that she was completely clear headed when she scrambled over to comfort her husband during his last moments.

Er...that's how it should have been.

What actually happened was:

NewWifey(tm) rolled over, saw her husband screaming and pawing at the side of his mangled face, and said "I told you not to mix beer, Similac and NyQuil. You always hallucinate when you do that."

"But I wasn't...AAAAAAAUGH!!!"

I leapt out of bed and bolted for the bathroom. I desperately needed a towel to staunch the flow of blood.

Two steps from the bathroom door I was hit again, mid-stride. BLAM! The force of it spun me sideways, pitching me right through the doorway as I fell. Through instinct I shot an arm out, grabbing wildly for anything to break my fall, and as luck would have it managaed to grasp the steel ring towel holder next to the sink. Now, steel ring towel holders are pretty strong - they're made of steel after all, and can withstand the weight of a sopping wet hand towel.

Unfortunately, what ANCHORS the strong steel ring towel holders to hotel walls is only two 3/8" Phillip's head screws.

I know this because both of them left an imprint in my back. 220 pounds of Italian free-falling at 40 mph catapulted those puppies out at bullet speed, as the entire rack tore free from the wall, crashing down along with me into the vanity. Then, with a rending craaaack, the marble top split diagonally from the near corner right to the sink!

I lay where I hit, stunned and convinced I was dead. Above me, little motel bars of soap and bottles of conditioner were catapulted out of their basket and now pelted me as I sprawled next to the toilet.

This finally got a reaction from NewWifey(tm).

"What the HELL are you doing??!" she screamed as she came running towards the bathroom.

"Honey...honey..." I groaned from the floor. "You've gotta help me - I've been shot. I don't think I'm gonna make it...."

She just stared ar me with her mouth open.

"You are SUCH a bullshitter. Will you get up off...you - broke - the vanity!" She actually gasped when she saw that. "Get up! YOU BROKE THE FUCKING VANITY! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

"I told you - someone shot me!"

She knelt down.

"Shot you? SHOT you? WHERE??"

"The right side of my face. A couple of times. Right in my ear."

"....Shouldn't you be...dead then?"

"I guess the bullets hit at an angle or something. Listen, I've gotta stop the blood and get to a hospital. Gimme a towel or a maxi-pad or something already, willya?"

NewWifey(tm) looked at me closely, her eyes scanning all around my face.

"There's no blood."

"Waddaya mean there's no blood. I've just been shot! FOUR TIMES! There has to be blood!"

She bent down until her eyes were just millimeters from my right ear. She peered...and peered closer. I could smell the Jameson's.

"You...have a flea in your ear!"

WHAT??

A flea?!

I felt around the side of my face, really feeling this time. Free from hysteria now, I could tell that indeed I was not bleeding, and there were no gaping holes in my skull. The flea must have been jumping right on my eardrum, making it sound like explosions were reverberating through my head. And kept from making a clean leap to freedom by all the wax that had built up in the two months since I'd last swabbed!

I got off the floor, looked around at the marble carnage, and asked NewWifey(tm) to bring me a Q-Tip and her compact mirror. Tongue protruding, brow furrowed in concentration, I sat on the edge of the bed working the cotton swab around with one hand while tilting the compact's mirror trying to get the at least a partial view. NewWifey(tm) knew to keep well away from this little dance.

Finally...success! I heard a slight "click!" as the chitinous little body was pinned between cotton batting and skin. I pulled the swab out and there he was. The little bastard. Stuck to the end of the Q-Tip, he looked helpless and tiny.

I decided to kill him slowly.

If you're good, you can trap a flea between the tips of your two thumbnails and with a quick downward twist snap their little bodies in half in an eyeblink. If you're not good, or are particularly vengeful, you can trap the critter between one nail and the meat of a finger. By pressing steadily and firmly, you gradually compress its exoskeleton until his tiny alimentary tract is forced out of his tiny anus. Then you return to the salad bar for seconds.

I opted for the second method.

Carefully...carefully...I positioned the Condemned up against my left thumbnail and began sliding him off the swab with my right forefinger. If I did it right, he should slide free just as he was trapped between the two.

I didn't do it right.

I mean, I was SOCLOSE. Just a fraction of a second gap, where my finger freed him from his waxy prison and before being pressed to the nail, was all it took for him to find his footing, and -

SPROING!

Gone!

NOOOooooo....!

I saw the tiny black speck arc up over my shoulder and land on a pillow.

I couldn't let him escape! Grabbing the first thing to come to hand - the hotel alarm clock - I yanked it free and threw myself onto the bed, smashing the clock down on that pillow with all I had. I had to kill that damned flea! With the first jolt the clock's radio switched on at full volume and wouldn't turn off. I didn't even hear it.

Well, they apparently make hotel beds out of the same material as their towel racks. I dropped onto the mattress from a height of about 3 feet, punching straight down as I landed. And as soon as I hit I heard a somewhat muffled woooomf....crack! as all four of the legs gave way, sending the box spring, mattress, comforter, me, and the flea, another two feet to the floor. I didn't even notice - I was pumping that alarm clock up and down against the pillow for all I was worth in a murderous rage.

That's when the door opened and the hotel manager and a constable walked in.

There I was, naked, kneeling on a broken king sized bed, repeatedly slamming a blaring alarm clock into a pillow. NewWifey(tm) was cowering in a corner. The light from the bathroom perfectly lit the now two-piece vanity and selection of toiletries strewn around the floor.

"What is going on here?" the manager bellowed.

I stopped, the alarm clock poised above my head.

"Um...I was...attacked. By...uh...a flea. See, it got in my ear and I was trying to kill it because I thought it might bore into my brain and...."

The constable broke in, "We had reports of a woman screaming from other guests, and crashing sounds." He looked at NewWifey(tm). "Did he hit you, ma'am?"

I know NewWifey(tm), and could tell what she was thinking. This was her big chance! I could see the internal debate - her desire to really stick it to me for being a ridiculous asshole for once, versus her Midwestern sense of wifely duty to always stand by her man.

I wouldn't have laid money on either outcome right then.

She sighed. "No, he didn't hit me. He just had...an accident."

The manager looked around at the splintered bedframe, the towel ring and hardware on the floor, the shattered vanity.

"An 'accident'? Just one?"

NewWifey(tm) shrugged.

The manager then said, "Mr. Spouse, put your clothes on and gather your things. The constable will escort you and your wife from the premises. You are being evicted from this hotel, and we will be billing your credit card for the damages as soon as that ammount is determined."

And with that he left the room. The constable stayed behind waiting for us.

That's when we were very grateful we ended up renting the Hummer. With all the other hotels in town booked, the only lodging we were able to find was...its back seat. What seemed initially like an insanely cavernous cargo space was now appreciated for being snug sleeping quarters. And, the $450 rental fee was less than the cost of the hotel (um...although we were not refunded our remaining pre-paid ammount by the manager. And yes, I had the balls to ask.) We decided to skip looking for room vacancies the rest of our stay, just sleep in the Hummer and wash up at gas stations (since we had to fill the tank every two hours anyway). It ended up working out not bad at all, really. Room service suffered, but otherwise.....

The flight home was uneventful, save for one thing. About an hour after takeoff, shortly before the steward made the first of several rounds distributing stale mini-pretzel packs, I felt a tickle on my arm.

Yeah, it was the flea. THE flea.

At that point I knew better than to jump up and try to smash it to death with the drop-down oxygen mask. I really didn't want a confrontation with the Air Marshals who were no doubt on every international flight entering the US now, and on the lookout for that sort of behavior. I'm sure they would have, like the hotel manager, evicted me. At 30,000 feet.

So I kept my natural impulses under control, instead just raising my forearm to eye level and leaned it against the headrest of the seat in front of me. A slight prod with the plug of my Mp3's earpiece and...sproing! Right into the beehive hairdo of the old lady reading a copy of Lamp Finials Quarterly. She started discreetly scratching her scalp when we were somewhere over Pittsburgh.

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We haven't recieved word from the credit card company as to how much we'll be charged for my insect vendetta yet. But if it comes to anything near the Collateral Hold that was put on the Hummer ($10,000), you may be seeing John Walsh profile me on "Canada's Most Wanted" soon. Just to be sure, I used another credit card to pay off the one I put the hotel tab on, then cancelled THAT card so they couldn't dun me. I'm also thinking of having facial reconstructive surgery, just in case. Couldn't hurt regardless, according to NewWifey(tm).

Anyone know if the US has an extradition treaty with the Canuks?

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Oh well, gotta go. I'm itching to get to bed.

Ciao!