It's summer in the city, no matter what the calendar says.
On Saturday afternoon, I was transfixed by a young man at the Stewart's store on Van Vranken Avenue. It wasn't him so much as the massive python he had wrapped around his neck.
He had the snake's head in his hand and was holding it out for a woman to look at. She had all kinds of questions for him.
The guy with the snake was ordering a sundae. Yes, he wanted cherries on it, he said. He told the woman with the questions that a lot of times when people come to his home they see the snake and they, like, want to leave. Imagine that.
I watched and listened from a different cash register. I don't like snakes.
So, of course, the guy with the snake decided to leave just as I did but, with a burst of speed, I beat him to the door. As much as I wanted not to, I held the door for him because, you know, he had a python around his neck and a cherry-bedecked sundae in his hands. Then, as I tried to get away quickly, I dropped my bag and had to scramble to get out of his and the python's way. Too close for my comfort zone.
As I drove away I wondered if that python ever gives its owner a little squeeze, just to remind him who's really in charge.
Only minutes later, I encountered a new spectacle, this time on Avenue B.
A man in a motorized wheelchair was sitting in the street facing the sidewalk and gazing admiringly at a young woman with bright blue hair who stood on the sidewalk with a young man.
Then it became clear he wasn't staring at her so much as at the blonde ferret she was holding, its long sinewy body stretched along her arm which she had thrust out toward the man in the wheelchair.
Wow, thought I, a stretched-out yellow rat. I don't like rodents much either, though I did slow down to a crawl as I drove by so I could get a good look.
I'd seen the man in the wheelchair before. On Memorial Day, as I sat in the warm sun on the stoop, he drove by in his chair. He had a fairly big dog on a leash running alongside him in the street. The man was eating a big hunk of watermelon, and I had the sudden thought that it's probably not a good idea to be driving your wheelchair in the street while eating watermelon and tending to a big dog on a leash.
I've really got to start carrying a camera again.
Irv Dean is the Gazette's city editor.
