Chuck-ese

It was awful. It was unexpected. It came out of a bottle of Parrot Bay. It was*…The Monster in the Bottle Bin!

I was sorting bottles one day, clear in one bin, colored in another. In my collating, I sighted up a clear glass bottle, probably of Parrot Bay, that looked like it had some sort of translucent object in it. I thought it was a tissue someone had jammed in the bottle. (People tend to jam all sorts of things in glass bottles before they recycle them. DO NOT DO THIS.) As I picked up the bottle, the translucent object–which was as big around as the base of the bottle–came alive. Where I had only before seen blurry white, I now saw legs, spines, a pair of claws or pincers, and other things that make you go “eww…” It contracted itself enough that it could slither through the neck of the bottle, eject itself onto the cover of the clear-bottle bin, and scurry under the lid.

I was able to get a better look at it in the fraction of a second it was in the air. It looked somewhat like a scorpion without a tail, or an albino porcupine-lobster. Either way, I wasn’t fucking going near that bin until it was changed. I initially thought I was hallucinating, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.
I never saw that creature again, but it lives in my mind ever still.  That night, I went up north with some friends, and recounted the story to them. They had about the same reaction I did. It’s been about a month since I saw Lucifer’s spawn itself, yet the whole incident still chills me to the bone.

Oh, before I forget, a friend suggested that what I saw might be a silverfish. While it does have the same Satanic vibe about it, neither the silverfish or the house centipede have the claws/pincers I think I saw.

And what-the-fuck row 2 picture 4?

Everytime you go to the grocery store, you take with you your empty bottles and cans to recycle. You’re recycling and you feel good about yourself (or you just really need your deposit back). Then you go, merrily on your way, completely absolved of any responsibility for your waste. What you fail to realize is that those bottles and cans aren’t magically transported to some sort of Fairy Recycling Center. The glass bottles have to be sorted into clear and colored ([Insert dated apartheid joke here]) by hand. The rest have to be dragged out of the machine and taken back to the large bins. So, as a favor to the dragging hands like us, here are some do’s and don’t’s regarding your recyclables.

1. Rinse the fucking things out. There’s nothing worse than having to crawl on the floor, getting the cans and bottles that overflowed from the recepticle, in a puddle of four or five different sodas/beers.

2. If it came with a cap, return it with a cap. (Yes, even if you washed it out.) Helps prevent the above. I’ve noticed that the only glass bottles that come in with caps on them are the big 40s and the non-alcoholic beverages. (The latter being a pretty small percentage of the total. The former not so much.)

3. Bottles are not mini-garbage cans. Nobody should have to deal with any cigarettes, used fireworks, or mutant space aliens you decide to shove in there.

That’s all I got. Mostly a set up for another post.