Periodically, I like to dip into one of the neighborhood websites to see if anyone is giving away something they are desperate to get rid of and which I might be slightly desperate to acquire.
Recently, I’ve been considering replacing my desk — currently an old door sitting on two homemade sawhorses — with something with drawers and without paint spills and drill holes. What I usually find being offered is a 4,000-pound piece of office furniture that requires an overhead crane, a winch and a flatbed truck to move.
Some other items that I pass on are 150-gallon fish tanks, bags of rubber finger puppets and the most adorable set of ceramic troll figurines.
More alarming are the offers of free pets. No, I am certainly not interested in relieving some animal-adoring household of their nonstop barking dog that is not amenable to being house-trained. Nor do I want the half-blind, vicious cat, beloved by the family, but not safe around small children.
It’s not unusual to come across people trying to unload a pile of rotten wood or “back-fill.” Both are probably of greater value than the usual offers of debris people have just emptied out of their attics or basements.
While browsing the free stuff, I sometimes can’t resist taking a look at other postings. For instance, “I’m new to the area. Can anyone recommend a local shaman to cure my bunions? Feathers, rattles and bells are fine, but please no incense — my gerbil is allergic.”
Such inquiries are usually followed by a host of testimonials recommending Dr. Quackenbush, “a true master at laying on of hands who cured me of hiccups in only one week.”
And, no, I cannot recommend a reliable Tarot Card reader.
The posters that evoke the greatest pity and abuse are the hapless newcomers who have arrived to our semi-rural Hopewell from an urban world where wildlife consisted of pigeons, squirrels, and cockroaches. These poor folk find nature a bewildering, even horrifying challenge. But worse. the innocent questions they ask tend to provoke the most merciless responses.
Frequently, frightened former city dwellers announce that they have just encountered a reptile (usually a garter snake or a milk snake), post a picture, and wonder what they are and how dangerous. Invariably, a multitude of area experts identify, with absolute certainty, that what they have in the garden is either a spitting cobra or a black mamba.
Too often, the beneficial reptile has already been put to death by a father-in-law or brother-in-law protecting the home from certain annihilation. Why is it that the misguided slayer of satanic serpents is always an in-law? Surely some of those in-laws must be someone’s blood relative.
Similar posts of terror appear in regard to insects, particularly wasps, hornets and bees. Are they benign or deadly? Is the insecticide more dangerous than the insect?
Large crickets or grasshoppers are often unmistakably identified by an in-law, who just happens to be a trained bug-ologist, as a scarab beetle that has escaped from an ancient Egyptian tomb. And anyone touching it is sure to incur a long-lasting and painful curse. Of course, the bug could be a scorpion.
Speaking of unfamiliarity with the natural world, I once watched a neighbor erect an elaborate trellis and prepare to use it to support a fine growth of poison ivy.
Less usual are the newcomers who have absolutely spotted a mountain lion in their backyard. Only occasionally does someone report the sighting of a woolly mammoth.
Such postings usually include pleas for mercy by the posters acknowledging how little they know about life in the country. They rarely receive the least bit of sympathy. More likely, the sophisticated responses are swift and to the point, “Hey, stupid, What are you stupid, you stupid stupid-head?”
Robin Schore lives in Hopewell Borough.
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