Neon-Lit Cornucopia

Bella no longer sees her walks as healthy constitutionals. Instead, she sees them as foraging expeditions. She stitches together paths and destinations in order to maximize the possibility of finding food, making sure to always cruise by convenience markets, restaurants, dumpsters, and bars. You'd think she was starving, or something. Just the nature of dogs!

Bella's limp appears to be improving somewhat. A slow recovery.

The homeless folks continue to live their lives of quiet desperation. I witnessed a woman moving her campsite from one side of Broadway to the other. She put all her belongings on a tarp, folded the tarp like a taco, and dragged everything across the street. I guess she didn't have time to make a travois in the manner of the Plains Indians in the centuries before the advent of the horse. A homeless man at a traffic light spilled his belongings off an overloaded cart just as Bella and I came walking up. I wanted to say hello, but the man was facing down and muttering to himself as he gathered belongings. Later, I looked back, and saw another man helping him pick up things. I should have helped out too. I saw another man suddenly shout as if being evicted from behind a dumpster, but no one was there - his opponents were the voices in his head. He went around the corner, overturned his shopping cart in some landscaping, sat down at the curb, and hung his head in despair.

Urban wildlife has been sparse of late. I heard a noise on a porch, looked up, and saw an anxious raccoon gazing down at Bella. On Broadway, an erratic rat rattled a chain link fence and then ran straight up to Bella. The rat hesitated, thought better of it, then ran away. For sport, Bella charged a chain link fence to roust a construction-site cat.

Under the 16th Street/Highway 50 underpass, a fellow was repairing a bike. Just then, Sk8er Grrrl (whom I haven't seen since May, and who is, by far, the most interesting person out here) came skateboarding up. She told me "I've met you before!" before Bicycle Guy whistled and called her over. Sk8er Grrrl flipped up her board and walked over to see what he was doing.

Bella has been pushing farther and farther north of Fremont Park towards the State Capitol, entering areas recently-gentrified for the amusement of young urban professionals. Bella has discovered young urban professionals carelessly-spill the contents of their fish tacos on the sidewalk.

Bella's started to integrate these central-city forays with her visits to the inexhaustible neon-lit cornucopia of the Safeway parking lot. Last night, as we arrived at Safeway, several young people were preparing to bicycle away with their purchases. I explained to a young woman who came over to say hello that Bella was there because Safeway's parking lot has the best food. "Hell, yeah!" the woman exclaimed.

Bella and I are becoming intimately-familiar with the geography of the Safeway parking lot. Someone built a cairn with broken pieces of concrete at Safeway's north end - a monument to commemorate some unknown person or event. Under the concrete pad behind the Safeway South-End dumpster there is a kind of burrow - could be perfect as a Carlsbad Caverns for rats. Bella likes this area, and since it's immediately adjacent to a Wells Fargo branch bank, I'm sure there is plenty of security-camera footage of Bella's microexaminations of the area.

Sometimes Bella sits in front of Safeway's automatic doors, shifting position just enough to open and close the doors, in order to gaze inside at Safeway's Floral Department. I wonder what she makes of the Floral Department? A penny for her thoughts.

If Bella somehow ever gets lost, I'll eventually find her idling away in the Safeway parking lot.