I was coming home around midnight, walking along the concrete path to my door, when I saw something lying in the way.  It was a gelid and wet mass of thick  translucent white cords, all aswim in a thick red goo.  It resembled nothing so much as a pile of hookworms, covered in blood.

I do often count those who hail from third world countries as my neighbors, and it isn’t impossible that someone in the apartment complex brought some visitors with them when they entered the US.  If so, considering the amount of blood coating the pavement, they were in need of immediate medical attention!

But something just wasn’t right.  The hookworms in front of me were awfully big, much larger than the skinny strings that are the usual size for the beasts.  Another concern was that the blood loss must have been considerable, so much that I doubt anyone could have walked away after ejecting the mass.  As there was no body supine in the grass, then the poor soul must have been carted away by ambulance.  If that had happened, though, then why would someone leave the worms alone instead of cleaning them up?

I ripped a branch from a nearby bush and stirred the loathsome stew, looking to see if any of the worms writhed at the woody touch.  They were dead, lifeless, quiet.  And then the smell drifted into my nose and I realized that the puzzling pile was not made from blood and hookworms, but onion rings and ketchup!

Someone had stuffed themselves to bursting with the deep fried delicacy, only to sick it up a few yards from my front door.  I had not actually detected the odor of the food, but instead was hit full bore in the face with the cloyingly sweet scent of the liter or so of fortified wine they had used to wash it all down.

How was the smell recognized if I don’t imbibe myself?  I had to deal with drunks aplenty when working for the police.  The odor of bumwine that has come back up is extremely familiar.

I slung the stick back towards the parent bush, and hurried inside to leash up the dogs for their walk.  They reacted as I expected when walking past the frothy and alcohol infused mass.  “Onion rings, and all for me!”

I kept a tight rein, though, and did not let them feast.  Besides the fact that their breath would have smelled even worse, they also could have become drunk from the leftover booze.  And who would want to deal with a pit bull suffering from a hangover?

This, dear readers, is yet another chapter in my glamorous and thrilling life!