Cart in the Wild
On a bright morning early in the fall of 2007, I chanced upon this shopping cart while I was driving to work.
His markings identified him to my experienced eyes as a member of a Crowley’s Value City wobble*.
Probably the poor thing had been spooked by something, and quite possibly had been terrorized by a UBM.
What was certain from the unsteady casters and thinning PVC of his torso was that this poor adolescent male was starving.
I calmed him down by stroking his muzzle and quietly calling for assistance on aisle 12.
Having gained his trust, I lead the fellow–whom I’d now taken to calling “Screechy” due to his lack of lubrication–to a meager store of food I’d kept in the trunk of my car for just such an occasion.
Screechy greedily accepted the plastic deposit bottles and grew a bit more playful and alert.
Since I was at work, and my company has no facilities adequate to house such a large cart safely, I called a local chapter of Cart Fancier’s to see if I couldn’t locate Screechy’s wobble immediately.
Shortly, a pleasant Fancier named Martin informed me that the most likely home for Screechy was across the street at the Universal Mall Value City, where a very large wobble had been under a bit of stress lately due to impending closure of their native habitat for economic reasons.
With current economic circumstances, loss of natural habitat is an increasingly disheartening problem for the Detroit area wobbles. And while I sympathized with the plight of such, it really is not my place to intervene in such matters. I choose, instead, to make my donations to preservation leagues such as Cart Fanciers and Pull Left!; only by pooling our resources can conservationists like myself hope to make a difference to the wobbles of carts like Screechy.
So perhaps the wobble will someday die off, along with Screechy. But until then, his place is at home in Value City. So I carefully lead him across the Dequindre motorist thoroughfare and released him within cartsight of Value City. Here is my last photo of him as he spotted his friends and began to sprint homewards.
Goodbye, Screechy. And good luck. I wonder how he’s doing now?
* A group of birds is a flock, a group of cows is a herd and a group of carts is a wobble. Look it up!
Whoa, what a beaut!
I can’t believe you got so close to that thing. Anything could have happened to you. You weren’t raised by a wobble in the wild were you?
I’ve been interested since I was a teenager.
I actually had been a serial abuser of carts… but something happened that horrified me and since then I”ve been working to lessen the pain of cartness.
You are truly doing God’s work on earth. Now, with all of the Farmer Jack locations closing down, one wonders what happened to the may wobbles that lived at each one?
Something needs to be done. I shall write my congressman. In crayon.
Poor thing. Away from its family. Must be darn lonely.
DaveCat: I was once far more evil toward our little carty friends. Someday soon I may produce a confessional, just so you can understand how I came to this place.
RHSPapa! I haven’t seen you in what seems like ages. Are you still red hot and sexy in Singapore?
I suppose I should confess my own cart crimes here; while working as a bagger at the local grocery store in high school, co-workers and I who were assigned to clear the lot at the end of the night would often engage in brutal gladiatorial cart battles that involved crashing carts together, sometimes with riders, sometimes the carts traveling solo. We also took great pleasure in delivering running kicks at single carts, and sometimes sending them careening into walls at high speed. In quiet moments, I sometimes questioned the basic decency of myself and my co-workers for abusing the carts so badly; after all, what had they done to us? But usually, the sheer jocularity of it all took command and I laughed, oh how I laughed. The rest of the time I just drank to forget.
Aaaaawwwwww!
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