In Which I Ask Myself: Are Humans No Longer Responsible For Their Own Garbage?

Yuck!

As you may know, I was raised by wolves. As you may not know, wolves are neat and clean. When they change habitats, they do not leave their sofas, rusty bed frames, broken chairs, plastic bags full of trash and other abandoned accouterments of indoor dwelling in the back yard of their former residence. Therefore, you can imagine my surprise when gazing out of my bedroom window one morning instead of encountering the usual cement slab, I was confronted with a scene of disorderliness I had heretofore only associated with the apocalypse. Do humans take no pride in their ability to clean up after themselves? Do they not yearn to leave their place tidy for the next person? Do they not understand I find it depressing to be reminded I live in squalor every time I look out the window? Wolves do not let each other down in this manner.

Screw Living For The Weekend. I'm Living For The Evening.

Sometimes I wish I had never been "rescued" from the family of wolves that raised me in the forest preserves outside Chicago . Sure, that would mean having to forgo human-style luxuries like indoor plumbing, book-learning, and warm cooked meals. However, I would point out that I had gummi bears for dinner last night, book-learning has brought me nothing but sorrow, and (as I have previously mentioned) I hardly get to used the indoor plumbing around here anyways. I might as well be living with the wolves! Most importantly to my argument is the fact that if I were still living with wolves, I would not have to have an office job. Sure, I'd have responsibilities to the pack and would have to help out with the hunting. But among the wolves, I would still remain an exotic visitor, not a lowly secretary. I would not have to interrupt my work flow to "find the Jones file" or take seven telephone messages from the same client in three hours, for example. Wolves do not do this type of work.

Apparently, I Am The Omega Roommate. I Am Not Allowed To Use The Bathroom.

Wolves do it outdoors.

While I was growing up with my lupine family in the forest preserves outside Chicago, I got used to thinking of the outdoors as my own personal WC. Leaves for toilet paper. That sort of thing. But now that I live in a house, I would just as soon do my personal private business within the bright white walls of what I've come to learn is called 'the bathroom.' Just because I can. Not so.

(To those of you who are wondering how all of this makes me the 'omega' roommate, it just so happens to be a little bit of wolf lingo describing the member of the group who is the outcast. Who is always getting metaphorically shit upon. Maybe literally. Of course, this could never happen to me because I am never allowed in the bathroom. But perhaps I shouldn't presume the shitting upon would take place there.)

Actually, it would probably be alright for me to use the bathroom if it were ever available. My roommate takes showers that are soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long that I have to go to the bathroom three times over before he's done. I would go in the yard, but there's just a big cement slab back there. No little bushes for privacy. So I am back to square one.

A Few Reasons Why Wolves Are Easier To Get Along with Than Humans

my good friends, canis lupus

• Wolves tend to live in forests with lots of room and not in shared living situations with four other roommates and one bathroom. Really, don't you think wolves can go the bathroom whenever and wherever they want anyways?
• I am a human raised by wolves and I have better manners than many wolves raised by humans. It was a sad day indeed when some well-intentioned missionaries caught up with me in the forest preserves outside the Chicago suburbs. Until then my only contact with humans had been LARP (those engaged in live-action role playing games) and the occasional klansman, but suddenly there I was in Catholic school. Walking upright no less.
• Ranchers taint sheep carcasses with lithium to teach those wolves a nasty lesson. They bite in and get sick sick sick. But the point is, wolves are well-medicated. They do not take out their personal problems on, say, their roommates. Also, if memory serves, wolves do not take hour long showers in the morning when other people also have to go to work.
• People often pretend to be wolves when really they are just an exquisite, exotic kind of sheep. You bite in, they make you sick. Wolves, however, are just wolves. They remain fairly predictable in that they do wolfish things in wolfish ways.
• A lot of people go haywire around the time of the full moon and act odd in strange ways. For example they might be extra grouchy to their, say, roommates and yell and pout that they want to be left alone even though they are in the middle of the common area and have a very large bedroom at their disposal where they can be very, very alone whenever they feel like it. It is not like anyone is stopping them. Wolves, on the other hand, just get together in their social groups and enjoy a good howl.
• Wolves clearly have a better sense of style than some humans. Their sleek gray coats glisten in the moonlight in a way that horrid sweat pants never will.
  
• Wolves do not throw away their roommate's food during manic cleaning sprees because the, say, perfectly good milk is one day past the 'enjoy by' date. Don't think you can convince me that wolves care about these sorts of things. They don't. I used to live with them, remember?
• The dog, by the way, is not even its own species. It is a subspecies of the wolf. How's that for man's best friend?
• Wolves do pool their resources to hunt as a group.