I was smoking out on the deck this afternoon looking out across Hampshire Street over at the yard and parking lot of the Cambridge Public Works. A new sign caught my eye. Quickly I scanned and read the words. “Rabies Clinic to be held in THIS parking lot April 1st. Dogs only please.” Or something similar. As a citizen and taxpayer, I felt enraged… but not myself rabid, I’m talking more steroid rage than rabies rage…
Without any kind of consensus decision-making, no Area 4 townhall meetings, nothing from the Area 4 leadership, my block has been thrown into a Bob Barker-style rabies free zone. The Rabies Jesus opens up the rabies clinic next week and soon my street and neighborhood will be flooded by pre-rabid dogs and potentially, babies with rabies.
Don’t laugh. If you’re laughing about my rabies anxiety then you’ve obviously never been savagely chased down by a superstrong crawling baby, basically a viscous baby crab with human dental. No, its not the end of the world that Area 4 has gone all Bob Barker in their politics and wants to vaccinate every dog in the neighborhood against all the feral, rabid animals that prowl the streets.
The clinic however is a threat to the health of the neighborhood and we should have been consulted. God damn it, when a neighborhood gets a bio-lab that may or may not have uncurable strains of bird flu from the 1940s Korean peninsula, there are newspaper headlines. But when the Public Works decides that their parking lot should turn into a magnet for rabies, the taxpapers aren’t even informed prior?
Scenario 1: I am walking home from work when all of a sudden a baby crawls after me three times the speed an adult man can run. Escaping only because I climb up a tree and kick the foamy mouthed baby down through the branches onto the hard sidewalk, knocking it unconscious, I cellphone the mayor of Cambridge and ask why he thought inviting rabies to a parking lot across the street from my home was a great idea for Area 4.
Scenario 2: Rabid dogs break into my house while I’m not home and set up a surveillance shop to scope out whichever dogs from the hood are getting vaccinated, to avoid wasting time in future bitings. Coming back from a mission for Tab Energy Drink, taurined up the ass, I blaze onto the scene of the next episodes of Cops and When Rabid Animals Attack.
The whole thing is on exactly the same level as a nuclear waste dump. When you invite that element, you know, be it rabies or nuclear waste, into your neighborhood, with that element comes a certain amount of trouble. The best part about rabid squirrels is that most of the time they just climb up into trees and turn all foamy and viscious up there, where humans aren’t. Chip and Dale may be cute and furry cartoon characters, but in real life they knew how to respond to trouble.
Maybe the dog in Summer of Sam was merely talking about self defense. For that matter, if they can make homeless shelters out of decommissioned cruise ships why not have the rabies clinic in the parking lot of Best Buy or Walmart, or on a decommissioned tugboat? I mean, how many dogs are we really talking about? 
Not that I won’t go down on April 1st and take my shot like the rest of my dogs, don’t get me wrong. Some people have suggested I may already have rabies.
I swear the foaming is just my sensitive intestines gargling regurgitating Tab Energy Drink, thats why my mouth foam is pink ya’ll. Don’t panic just cause the corners of my mouth are lined with dry, powdery Taurine. It ain’t rabies, my babies.