A Crockadillo, pecadillo.
A Care and feeding of critter monsters adventure.
“They say pain is a great teacher. I don't know what it's trying to teach me but it certainly has my attention!” A disgusted sigh became an outraged , “Are you seriously Vlogging right now? Seriously?”
Tracy slapped the phone out of her hands,
“ Hey I’m still streaming!” Tracy drew her side arm, making a point of selecting the area denial option.
Three hundred supersonic micro needles vaporized the smart phone.
“Hey what…” the backhand smack silenced protests. “ Get your ass moving now.” Tracy holstered her sidearm. Shawna scrambled to her feet wisely deciding now was not the time to argue. Lying to Tracy and nearly getting her killed for views had not turned out the way Shawna had planned.
Tracy stalked away weaving to avoid dangling wires that sparked and smoked. The scent of burnt plastic drifted heavily in the air.
Another day another dollar.
Screw this privileged wench, she can walk her sorry ass out of here.
Tracy picked up her pace, double timing it. “Hey, what about me ..” drifted from the darkness. Tracy flipped off the fading whiny voice behind her. The sounds of stumbling, painful encounters, tripping, falling warmed Tracy's heart. Three days of close encounters with Shawna the social influencer had eradicated Tracy's give a damn and compassion.
The bottle blonde was lucky Tracy had shot the phone instead of the traitorous socialist slitch.
Emerging from the service tunnel Tracy was greeted by a score or more vloggers all with their phones out streaming. Flipping them off two handed Tracy smiled. “ The bitch is still kicking, she's doing private only fans shots right now.” Hooking a thumb towards the exit. “ See for yourself.” The vloggers rushed the tunnel. Tracy walked across the now deserted parking lot, climbed into her old, vintage military surplus K-5 Blazer.
She had changed nothing aside from the tires since buying it thirty years before. The Diesel engine turned over, a bit of black smoke escaping the vertical pipes. Surplus Cooking oil made the exhaust smell like over cooked french fries. Tracy often mixed in bacon grease as an additional screw you to the vegan protesters, a pettiness that made Tracy smile.
Tracy tapped out a cigarette, lit it up and took a long drag. She watched the entrance to the service tunnel with a bored disinterest. Any moment now Tracy would discover if her hunch had been correct.
Just because the treacherous Shawna was a nasty meat puppet of a human didn't necessarily mean she was worse. Though in Tracy's experience humans had proven to be far more monstrous than the monsters.
And, there it was as if on cue. Two of the socialist media doodles appeared, in full panic mode. The rest quickly tried to follow, though they all couldn't fit through the tunnel mouth at once.
Tracy dropped the K-5 into gear, slowly rolling towards the new excitement. Booger chose that moment to poke his nose between the seats to see what was going on. Tracy scratched the big wolfhounds head. Booger had proven to be the best theft deterrent possible. Tracy often left the Blazer unlocked, with windows down. Booger loved to lounge on his giant doggy pillow in the back. No one had ever dared try and get in the truck with Booger boy there. A two hundred pound Irish Wolfhound Timber wolf cross was a special kind of surprise.
Booger scrambled up into the passenger seat , poking his enormous head and neck out the window to better ascertain the situation. One long sniff and Booger had locked onto the service tunnel entrance.
The scrambling panicked socialists had scattered. Tracy could only count eleven staggering haphazardly across the parking lot. Any moment now the critter should emerge unless it had stopped to feed. Tracy had been hoping the Crockadillo had been sufficiently annoyed to emerge from it's lair.
If only the beastie boiee could be trained to feast on Socialists alone. Come to think about it, so far the only known victims had been the annoying socialist purveyors of brain cell destruction.
That thought led Tracy to consider simply driving away. Shawna the socialist switch had yet to emerge and Tracy had already down loaded the retainer fee into her account. The contract had been to locate the whereabouts of a possible Crockadillo, which had been accomplished. So technically the job had been completed.
Tracy decided that if the Crockadillo didn't exit the service tunnel very soon that she would report it anonymously and head home.
Booger had other ideas. A loud long baritone boof of announcement accompanied the launch. Booger had caught the scent and was enroute to the source. This was going to be interesting.
And then, it wasn't.
Booger charged into the service tunnel, boofing joyously.
Tracy threw the blazer into park , and leapt out , following her fuzzy companion.
Approaching the tunnel entrance, happy Wolfie boof barks were punctuated with high pitched squeaks. Tracy hesitated, listening, confused.
Booger emerged, dragging the crocadillo by the tail. The crocadillo was the source of the irritating high pitched squeaks.
Occasionally Booger would spin, as if chasing his tail, while the crocadillo was firmly chomped by it's tail. This created an odd ulullating amalgamation of squeaks from the apparently distressed crocadillo. Until Booger let go, sending the crocadillo cascading across the empty parking lot. Only to regain its feet and scramble back to Booger squeaking happily.
Tracy groaned in resignation. Booger had a new friend.
An armor plated carnivorous friend.
Well, that will likely save on Booger chew toys. The crocadillo seemed to enjoy being gnawed upon and flung about willy nilly.
Tracy walked back to her truck to wait until Booger and his new critter buddy were worn out from playing.
Sitting, smoking a cigar, Tracy wondered what had happened to the missing “ socialists”.
Hopefully the Crocadillo hadn't left any remains.
The upsurge in shallow social network influencers, that didn't understand even the basic definitions of the words they spoke had created a plague, a social disease, that Tracy believed could only doom society to destruction.
These destructive influencers had come to be termed “ Socialists”, not because they adhered to the philosophy of socialism, but because they spoke about socialism with no understanding of the concept on the social media networking services. They decried the evils of capitalism while practicing capitalism with the producers and systems of capitalism amidst the luxuries created through capitalism.
Tracy, could only hope more crocadillos were living in the shady parts of town.
Warning labels had started the decline of human civilization, interfering with natural selection.
Maybe this crocadillo infestation was nature's way of correcting what people had disrupted…
