BJ
02-11-2002, 02:57 PM
This is really long... but it's funny! A friend
in Hawaii sent this to me.
This is the story of the night a ten-year-old
cat, Rudy, got his head stuck
in the garbage disposal. I knew at the time that
the experience would be
funny if the cat survived, so let me tell you
right up front that he's fine.
Getting him out wasn't easy, though, and the
process included numerous home
remedies, a plumber, two cops, an emergency
overnight veterinary clinic, a
case of mistaken identity, five hours of panic,
and fifteen minutes of fame.
First, some background. My husband, Rich, and I
had just returned from a
five-day spring-break vacation in the Cayman
Islands, where I had been
sick-as-a dog the whole time, trying to convince
myself that if I had to
feel lousy, it was better to do it in paradise.
We had arrived home at 9
p.m., a day and a half later than we had planned
because of airline
problems. I still had illness-related vertigo,
and because of the flight
delays, had not been able to prepare the class I
was supposed to teach at
8:40 the
next morning. I sat down at my desk to think
about William Carlos
Williams, and around ten o'clock I heard Rich
hollering something
indecipherable from the kitchen. As I raced out
to see what was wrong, I saw
Rich frantically rooting around under the kitchen
sink and Rudy--or rather
Rudy's headless body--scrambling around in the
sink, his claws clicking in
panic on the metal. Rich had just ground up the
skin of some smoked salmon
in the garbage disposal, and when he left the
room, Rudy (whom we always did
call a pinhead) had gone in after it. It is very
disturbing to see the
headless body of your cat in the sink.
This is an animal that I have slept with nightly
for ten years, who burrows
under the covers and purrs against my side, and
who now looked like a
desperate, furcovered turkey carcass, set to
defrost in the sink while
it's still alive and kicking. It was also
disturbing to see Rich, Mr.
Calm-in-an-Emergency, at his wit's end, trying to
soothe Rudy, trying to
undo the garbage disposal, failing at both, and
basically freaking out.
Adding to the chaos was Rudy's twin brother,
Lowell, also upset, racing
around in circles, jumping onto the kitchen
counter and alternately licking
Rudy's butt for comfort and biting it out of
fear. Clearly, I had to do
something. First we tried to ease Rudy out of the
disposal by lubricating
his head and neck. We tried Johnson's baby
shampoo (kept on hand for my
nieces' visits) and butter-flavored Crisco: both
failed, and a now-greasy
Rudy kept struggling. Rich then decided to take
apart the garbage disposal,
which was a good idea, but he couldn't do it.
Turns out, the thing is
constructed like a metal onion: you peel off one
layer and another one
appears, with Rudy's head still buried deep
inside, stuck in a hard plastic
collar. My job during this process was to sit on
the kitchen counter petting
Rudy, trying to calm him, with the room spinning
(vertigo), Lowell howling
(he's part Siamese), and Rich clattering around
with tools. When all our
efforts failed, we sought professional help. I
called our regular plumber,
who actually called me back quickly, even at 11
o'clock at night (thanks,
Dave). He talked Rich through further layers of
disposal dismantling, but
still we couldn't reach Rudy. I called the 1-800
number for Insinkerator (no
response), a pest removal service that advertises
24-hour service (no
response), an all-night emergency veterinary
clinic (who had no experience
in this matter, and so, no advice), and finally,
in desperation, 911. I
could see that Rudy's normally pink paw pads were
turning blue. The fire
department, I figured, gets cats out of trees;
maybe they could get one out
of a garbage disposal. The dispatcher had other
ideas and offered to send
over two policemen. This suggestion gave me
pause. I'm from the sixties, and
even if I am currently a fine upstanding citizen,
I had never considered
calling the cops and asking them to come to my
house, on purpose. I resisted
the suggestion, but the dispatcher was adamant:
"They'll help you out," he
said. The cops arrived close to midnight and
turned out to be quite nice.
More importantly, they were also able to think
rationally,
which we were not. They were, of course, quite
astonished by the
situation: "I've never seen anything like this,"
Officer Mike kept
saying. The unusual circumstances helped us get
quickly on a first-name
basis with our cops. Officer Tom, who expressed
immediate sympathy for
otool, a tiny, circular rotating saw, that could
cut through the heavy
plastic flange encircling Rudy's neck without
hurting Rudy, and Officer
Tom happened to own one. "I live just five
minutes from here," he said;
"I'll go get it." He soon returned, and the three
of them--Rich and the
two policemen--got under the sink together to cut
through the garbage
disposal. I sat on the counter, holding Rudy and
trying not to succumb to
the surreal-ness of the scene, with the weird
middle-of-the-night
lighting, the room's occasional spinning,
Lowell's spooky sound effects, an
apparently headless cat in my sink and six
disembodied legs poking out from
under it. One good thing came of this: the guys
did manage to get the bottom
off of the disposal, so we could now see Rudy's
face and knew he could
breathe. But they couldn't cut the flange without
risking the cat. Stumped,
Officer Tom had another idea. "You know," he
said, "I think the reason we
can't get him out is the angle of his head and
body. If we couldjust get the
sink out and lay it on its side, I'll bet we
could slip him out." That
sounded like a good idea--at this point, ANYTHING
would have sounded like a
good idea--and as it turned out, Officer Mike
runs a plumbing business on
weekends; he knew how to take out the sink! Again
they went to work, the
three pairs of legs sticking out from under the
sink surrounded by an
ever-increasing pile of tools and sink parts.
They cut the electrical
supply, capped off the plumbing lines, unfastened
the metal clamps,
unscrewed all the pipes, and about an hour later,
voila!
the sink was lifted gently out of the countertop,
with one guy holding
the garbage disposal (which contained Rudy's
head) up close to the sink
which contained Rudy's body). We laid the sink on
its side, but even at
this more favorable removal angle, Rudy stayed
stuck. Officer Tom's radio
beeped, calling him away on some kind of real
police business. As he was
leaving, though, he had another good idea: "You
know," he said, "I don't
think we can get him out while he's struggling so
much. We need to get the
cat sedated. If he were limp, we could slide him
out." And off he went,
regretfully, a cat lover still worried about
Rudy. The remaining three of us
decided that getting Rudy sedated was a good
idea, but Rich and I were new
to the area. We knew that the overnight emergency
veterinary clinic was only
a few minutes away, but we didn't know exactly
how to get there. "I know
where it is!" declared Officer Mike. "Follow me!"
So Mike got into his
patrol car, Rich got into the driver's seat of
our car, and I got into the
back, carrying the kitchen sink, what was left of
the garbage disposal, and
Rudy. It was now about 2:00 a.m. We followed
Officer Mike for a few blocks
when I decided to put my hand into the garbage
disposal to pet Rudy's face,
hoping I could comfort him. Instead, my sweet,
gentle bedfellow chomped down
on my finger, hard--really hard--and wouldn't let
go. My scream reflex
kicked into gear, and I couldn't stop the noise.
Rich slammed on the breaks,
hollering "What? What happened? Should I stop?",
checking us out in the
rearview mirror. "No," I managed to get out
between screams, "just keep
driving. Rudy's biting me, but we've got to get
to the vet. Just go!" Rich
turned his attention back to the road, where
Officer Mike took a turn we
hadn't expected, and we followed. After a few
minutes Rudy let go, and as I
stopped screaming, I looked up to discover that
we were wandering aimlessly
through an industrial park, in and out of empty
parking lots, past little
streets that didn't look at all familiar.
"Where's he taking us?" I asked.
"We should have been there ten minutes ago!" Rich
was as mystified as I was,
but all we knew to do was follow the police car
until, finally, he pulled
into a church parking lot and we pulled up next
to him. As Rich rolled down
the window to ask, "Mike, where are we going?",
the cop, who was not Mike,
rolled down his window and asked, "Why are you
following me?" Once Rich and
I recovered from our shock at havingtailed the
wrong cop car and the
policeman from his pique at being stalked, he led
us quickly to the
emergency vet, where Mike greeted us by holding
open the door, exclaiming
"Where were you guys???"
It was lucky that Mike got to the vet ahead of
us, because we hadn't
thought to call and warn them about what was
coming. (Clearly, by this
time we weren't really thinking at all.) We
brought in the kitchen sink
containing Rudy and the garbage disposal
containing his head, and the
clinic staff was ready. They took his temperature
(which was down 10
degrees) and his oxygen level (which was half of
normal), and the vet
declared: "This cat is in serious shock. We've
got to sedate him and get him
out of there immediately." When I asked if it was
OK to sedate a cat in
shock, the vet said grimly, "We don't have a
choice." With that, he injected
the cat; Rudy went limp; and the vet squeezed
about half a tube of K-Y jelly
onto the cat's neck and pulled him free. Then the
whole team jumped into
"code blue" mode. (I know this from watching a
lot of ER.)
They laid Rudy on a cart, where one person hooked
up IV fluids, another
put little socks on his paws ("You'd be amazed
how much heat they lose
through their pads," she said), one covered him
with hot water bottles
and a blanket, and another took a blow-dryer to
warm up Rudy's now very
gunky head. The fur on his head dried in stiff
little spikes, making him
look rather pathetically punk as he lay there,
limp and motionless. At this
point they sent Rich, Mike, and me to sit in the
waiting room while they
tried to bring Rudy back to life. I told Mike he
didn't have to stay, but he
just stood there, shaking his head. "I've never
seen
anything like this," he said again. At about 3
a.m, the vet came in to
tell us that the prognosis was good for a full
recovery. They needed to
keep Rudy overnight to re-hydrate him and give
him something for the
brain swelling they assumed he had, but if all
went well, we could take
him home the following night. Just in time to
hear the good news, Officer
Tom rushed in, finished with his real police work
and concerned about Rudy.
I figured that once this ordeal was over and Rudy
was home safely, I would
have to re-think my position on the police. Rich
and I got back home about
3:30. We hadn't unpacked from our trip, I was
still
intermittently dizzy, and I still hadn't prepared
my 8:40 class. "I need a
vacation," I said, and while I called the office
to leave a message
canceling my class, Rich made us a pitcher of
martinis. I slept late the
next day and then badgered the vet about Rudy's
condition until he said that
Rudy could come home later that day. I was
working on the suitcases when the
phone rang. "Hi, this is Steve Huskey from the
Norristown Times-Herald," a
voice told me. "Listen, I was just going through
the police blotter from
last night. Mostly it's the usual stuff-breaking
and entering, petty
theft--but there's this one item. Um, do you have
a cat?"
So I told Steve the whole story, which interested
him. A couple hours
later he called back to say that his editor was
interested, too; did I
have a picture of Rudy? The next day Rudy was
front-page news, under the
ridiculous headline "Catch of the Day Lands Cat
in Hot Water." There were
some noteworthy repercussions to the newspaper
article. Mr. Huskey had
somehow inferred that I called 911 because I
thought Rich, my husband, was
going into shock, although how he concluded this
from my comment that "his
pads were turning blue," I don't quite
understand. So the first thing I had
to do was call Rich at work--Rich, who had worked
tirelessly to free
Rudy--and swear that I had been misquoted. When I
arrived at work myself, I
was famous; people had been calling my secretary
all morning to inquire
about Rudy's health. When I called our regular
vet (whom I had met only
once) to make a follow-up appointment for Rudy,
the receptionist asked, "Is
this the famous Rudy's mother?" When I brought my
car in for routine
maintenance a few days later, Dave, my mechanic,
said, "We read about your
cat. Is he OK?" When I called a tree surgeon
about my dying red oak, he
asked if I knew the person on that street whose
cat had been in the garbage
disposal. And when I went to get my hair cut, the
shampoo person told me the
funny story her grandma had read in the paper,
about a cat who got stuck in
the garbage disposal. Even today, over a year
later, people ask about Rudy,
whom an 9-year-old neighbor had always called
"the Adventure Cat" because he
used to climb on the roof of her house and peer
in the second-story window
at her.
I don't know what the moral of this story is, but
I do know that this
"adventure" cost me $1100 in emergency vet bills,
follow-up vet care, new
sink, new plumbing, new electrical wiring, and
new garbage disposal-one with
a cover. The vet can no longer say he's seen
everything but the kitchen
sink. I wanted to thank Officers Tom and Mike by
giving them gift
certificates to the local hardware store, but was
told that they couldn't
accept gifts, that I would put them in a bad
position if I tried. So I wrote
a letter to the Police Chief praising their good
deeds and sent individual
thank-you notes to Tom and Mike, complete with
pictures of Rudy, so they
could see what he looks like with his head on.
And Rudy, whom we originally
got for free (or so we thought), still sleeps
with me--under the covers on
cold nights--and unaccountably, he still
sometimes prowls the sink, hoping
for fish.
in Hawaii sent this to me.
This is the story of the night a ten-year-old
cat, Rudy, got his head stuck
in the garbage disposal. I knew at the time that
the experience would be
funny if the cat survived, so let me tell you
right up front that he's fine.
Getting him out wasn't easy, though, and the
process included numerous home
remedies, a plumber, two cops, an emergency
overnight veterinary clinic, a
case of mistaken identity, five hours of panic,
and fifteen minutes of fame.
First, some background. My husband, Rich, and I
had just returned from a
five-day spring-break vacation in the Cayman
Islands, where I had been
sick-as-a dog the whole time, trying to convince
myself that if I had to
feel lousy, it was better to do it in paradise.
We had arrived home at 9
p.m., a day and a half later than we had planned
because of airline
problems. I still had illness-related vertigo,
and because of the flight
delays, had not been able to prepare the class I
was supposed to teach at
8:40 the
next morning. I sat down at my desk to think
about William Carlos
Williams, and around ten o'clock I heard Rich
hollering something
indecipherable from the kitchen. As I raced out
to see what was wrong, I saw
Rich frantically rooting around under the kitchen
sink and Rudy--or rather
Rudy's headless body--scrambling around in the
sink, his claws clicking in
panic on the metal. Rich had just ground up the
skin of some smoked salmon
in the garbage disposal, and when he left the
room, Rudy (whom we always did
call a pinhead) had gone in after it. It is very
disturbing to see the
headless body of your cat in the sink.
This is an animal that I have slept with nightly
for ten years, who burrows
under the covers and purrs against my side, and
who now looked like a
desperate, furcovered turkey carcass, set to
defrost in the sink while
it's still alive and kicking. It was also
disturbing to see Rich, Mr.
Calm-in-an-Emergency, at his wit's end, trying to
soothe Rudy, trying to
undo the garbage disposal, failing at both, and
basically freaking out.
Adding to the chaos was Rudy's twin brother,
Lowell, also upset, racing
around in circles, jumping onto the kitchen
counter and alternately licking
Rudy's butt for comfort and biting it out of
fear. Clearly, I had to do
something. First we tried to ease Rudy out of the
disposal by lubricating
his head and neck. We tried Johnson's baby
shampoo (kept on hand for my
nieces' visits) and butter-flavored Crisco: both
failed, and a now-greasy
Rudy kept struggling. Rich then decided to take
apart the garbage disposal,
which was a good idea, but he couldn't do it.
Turns out, the thing is
constructed like a metal onion: you peel off one
layer and another one
appears, with Rudy's head still buried deep
inside, stuck in a hard plastic
collar. My job during this process was to sit on
the kitchen counter petting
Rudy, trying to calm him, with the room spinning
(vertigo), Lowell howling
(he's part Siamese), and Rich clattering around
with tools. When all our
efforts failed, we sought professional help. I
called our regular plumber,
who actually called me back quickly, even at 11
o'clock at night (thanks,
Dave). He talked Rich through further layers of
disposal dismantling, but
still we couldn't reach Rudy. I called the 1-800
number for Insinkerator (no
response), a pest removal service that advertises
24-hour service (no
response), an all-night emergency veterinary
clinic (who had no experience
in this matter, and so, no advice), and finally,
in desperation, 911. I
could see that Rudy's normally pink paw pads were
turning blue. The fire
department, I figured, gets cats out of trees;
maybe they could get one out
of a garbage disposal. The dispatcher had other
ideas and offered to send
over two policemen. This suggestion gave me
pause. I'm from the sixties, and
even if I am currently a fine upstanding citizen,
I had never considered
calling the cops and asking them to come to my
house, on purpose. I resisted
the suggestion, but the dispatcher was adamant:
"They'll help you out," he
said. The cops arrived close to midnight and
turned out to be quite nice.
More importantly, they were also able to think
rationally,
which we were not. They were, of course, quite
astonished by the
situation: "I've never seen anything like this,"
Officer Mike kept
saying. The unusual circumstances helped us get
quickly on a first-name
basis with our cops. Officer Tom, who expressed
immediate sympathy for
otool, a tiny, circular rotating saw, that could
cut through the heavy
plastic flange encircling Rudy's neck without
hurting Rudy, and Officer
Tom happened to own one. "I live just five
minutes from here," he said;
"I'll go get it." He soon returned, and the three
of them--Rich and the
two policemen--got under the sink together to cut
through the garbage
disposal. I sat on the counter, holding Rudy and
trying not to succumb to
the surreal-ness of the scene, with the weird
middle-of-the-night
lighting, the room's occasional spinning,
Lowell's spooky sound effects, an
apparently headless cat in my sink and six
disembodied legs poking out from
under it. One good thing came of this: the guys
did manage to get the bottom
off of the disposal, so we could now see Rudy's
face and knew he could
breathe. But they couldn't cut the flange without
risking the cat. Stumped,
Officer Tom had another idea. "You know," he
said, "I think the reason we
can't get him out is the angle of his head and
body. If we couldjust get the
sink out and lay it on its side, I'll bet we
could slip him out." That
sounded like a good idea--at this point, ANYTHING
would have sounded like a
good idea--and as it turned out, Officer Mike
runs a plumbing business on
weekends; he knew how to take out the sink! Again
they went to work, the
three pairs of legs sticking out from under the
sink surrounded by an
ever-increasing pile of tools and sink parts.
They cut the electrical
supply, capped off the plumbing lines, unfastened
the metal clamps,
unscrewed all the pipes, and about an hour later,
voila!
the sink was lifted gently out of the countertop,
with one guy holding
the garbage disposal (which contained Rudy's
head) up close to the sink
which contained Rudy's body). We laid the sink on
its side, but even at
this more favorable removal angle, Rudy stayed
stuck. Officer Tom's radio
beeped, calling him away on some kind of real
police business. As he was
leaving, though, he had another good idea: "You
know," he said, "I don't
think we can get him out while he's struggling so
much. We need to get the
cat sedated. If he were limp, we could slide him
out." And off he went,
regretfully, a cat lover still worried about
Rudy. The remaining three of us
decided that getting Rudy sedated was a good
idea, but Rich and I were new
to the area. We knew that the overnight emergency
veterinary clinic was only
a few minutes away, but we didn't know exactly
how to get there. "I know
where it is!" declared Officer Mike. "Follow me!"
So Mike got into his
patrol car, Rich got into the driver's seat of
our car, and I got into the
back, carrying the kitchen sink, what was left of
the garbage disposal, and
Rudy. It was now about 2:00 a.m. We followed
Officer Mike for a few blocks
when I decided to put my hand into the garbage
disposal to pet Rudy's face,
hoping I could comfort him. Instead, my sweet,
gentle bedfellow chomped down
on my finger, hard--really hard--and wouldn't let
go. My scream reflex
kicked into gear, and I couldn't stop the noise.
Rich slammed on the breaks,
hollering "What? What happened? Should I stop?",
checking us out in the
rearview mirror. "No," I managed to get out
between screams, "just keep
driving. Rudy's biting me, but we've got to get
to the vet. Just go!" Rich
turned his attention back to the road, where
Officer Mike took a turn we
hadn't expected, and we followed. After a few
minutes Rudy let go, and as I
stopped screaming, I looked up to discover that
we were wandering aimlessly
through an industrial park, in and out of empty
parking lots, past little
streets that didn't look at all familiar.
"Where's he taking us?" I asked.
"We should have been there ten minutes ago!" Rich
was as mystified as I was,
but all we knew to do was follow the police car
until, finally, he pulled
into a church parking lot and we pulled up next
to him. As Rich rolled down
the window to ask, "Mike, where are we going?",
the cop, who was not Mike,
rolled down his window and asked, "Why are you
following me?" Once Rich and
I recovered from our shock at havingtailed the
wrong cop car and the
policeman from his pique at being stalked, he led
us quickly to the
emergency vet, where Mike greeted us by holding
open the door, exclaiming
"Where were you guys???"
It was lucky that Mike got to the vet ahead of
us, because we hadn't
thought to call and warn them about what was
coming. (Clearly, by this
time we weren't really thinking at all.) We
brought in the kitchen sink
containing Rudy and the garbage disposal
containing his head, and the
clinic staff was ready. They took his temperature
(which was down 10
degrees) and his oxygen level (which was half of
normal), and the vet
declared: "This cat is in serious shock. We've
got to sedate him and get him
out of there immediately." When I asked if it was
OK to sedate a cat in
shock, the vet said grimly, "We don't have a
choice." With that, he injected
the cat; Rudy went limp; and the vet squeezed
about half a tube of K-Y jelly
onto the cat's neck and pulled him free. Then the
whole team jumped into
"code blue" mode. (I know this from watching a
lot of ER.)
They laid Rudy on a cart, where one person hooked
up IV fluids, another
put little socks on his paws ("You'd be amazed
how much heat they lose
through their pads," she said), one covered him
with hot water bottles
and a blanket, and another took a blow-dryer to
warm up Rudy's now very
gunky head. The fur on his head dried in stiff
little spikes, making him
look rather pathetically punk as he lay there,
limp and motionless. At this
point they sent Rich, Mike, and me to sit in the
waiting room while they
tried to bring Rudy back to life. I told Mike he
didn't have to stay, but he
just stood there, shaking his head. "I've never
seen
anything like this," he said again. At about 3
a.m, the vet came in to
tell us that the prognosis was good for a full
recovery. They needed to
keep Rudy overnight to re-hydrate him and give
him something for the
brain swelling they assumed he had, but if all
went well, we could take
him home the following night. Just in time to
hear the good news, Officer
Tom rushed in, finished with his real police work
and concerned about Rudy.
I figured that once this ordeal was over and Rudy
was home safely, I would
have to re-think my position on the police. Rich
and I got back home about
3:30. We hadn't unpacked from our trip, I was
still
intermittently dizzy, and I still hadn't prepared
my 8:40 class. "I need a
vacation," I said, and while I called the office
to leave a message
canceling my class, Rich made us a pitcher of
martinis. I slept late the
next day and then badgered the vet about Rudy's
condition until he said that
Rudy could come home later that day. I was
working on the suitcases when the
phone rang. "Hi, this is Steve Huskey from the
Norristown Times-Herald," a
voice told me. "Listen, I was just going through
the police blotter from
last night. Mostly it's the usual stuff-breaking
and entering, petty
theft--but there's this one item. Um, do you have
a cat?"
So I told Steve the whole story, which interested
him. A couple hours
later he called back to say that his editor was
interested, too; did I
have a picture of Rudy? The next day Rudy was
front-page news, under the
ridiculous headline "Catch of the Day Lands Cat
in Hot Water." There were
some noteworthy repercussions to the newspaper
article. Mr. Huskey had
somehow inferred that I called 911 because I
thought Rich, my husband, was
going into shock, although how he concluded this
from my comment that "his
pads were turning blue," I don't quite
understand. So the first thing I had
to do was call Rich at work--Rich, who had worked
tirelessly to free
Rudy--and swear that I had been misquoted. When I
arrived at work myself, I
was famous; people had been calling my secretary
all morning to inquire
about Rudy's health. When I called our regular
vet (whom I had met only
once) to make a follow-up appointment for Rudy,
the receptionist asked, "Is
this the famous Rudy's mother?" When I brought my
car in for routine
maintenance a few days later, Dave, my mechanic,
said, "We read about your
cat. Is he OK?" When I called a tree surgeon
about my dying red oak, he
asked if I knew the person on that street whose
cat had been in the garbage
disposal. And when I went to get my hair cut, the
shampoo person told me the
funny story her grandma had read in the paper,
about a cat who got stuck in
the garbage disposal. Even today, over a year
later, people ask about Rudy,
whom an 9-year-old neighbor had always called
"the Adventure Cat" because he
used to climb on the roof of her house and peer
in the second-story window
at her.
I don't know what the moral of this story is, but
I do know that this
"adventure" cost me $1100 in emergency vet bills,
follow-up vet care, new
sink, new plumbing, new electrical wiring, and
new garbage disposal-one with
a cover. The vet can no longer say he's seen
everything but the kitchen
sink. I wanted to thank Officers Tom and Mike by
giving them gift
certificates to the local hardware store, but was
told that they couldn't
accept gifts, that I would put them in a bad
position if I tried. So I wrote
a letter to the Police Chief praising their good
deeds and sent individual
thank-you notes to Tom and Mike, complete with
pictures of Rudy, so they
could see what he looks like with his head on.
And Rudy, whom we originally
got for free (or so we thought), still sleeps
with me--under the covers on
cold nights--and unaccountably, he still
sometimes prowls the sink, hoping
for fish.