Mr. Smudge

Mark O. Karl works for the US Inefficient Wildlife Service. He has some sort of namby-pamby title like “outreach specialist” or some such horseshit.

This means he doesn’t do a whole lot except suck the cocks of his superiors, and get Herculean pay raises on a regular basis. My botanist friend that works there can’t stand him.

“I’m gonna find some endangered species like Lila-de-los llanos just so it fucks up his plans for a project here” he acerbically commented over his shoulder as we walked a small finger of dusty fine sand jutting out into the Bahia Grande, which for all practical purposes is drying up ever since “the service” decided to cut a channel from the Brownsville Ship Channel into that dustbowl, in an effort to flood it back to its original state, which was altered after the Ship Channel was built in the first place.

The new channel has silted in just like I predicted before they went to great expense and fanfare to cut it out of the mangroves and salt marshes, routing it under the road. That’s the way it is with the feral gumment by God, and you just better get used to it buddy.

The same way it is with Mark O. Karl, a short grinning little bastard with an undefined job.

Mostly my friend says, he attends meetings and talks on the phone, but as long as he keeps his nose firmly planted up the refuse managers collective asses, well, the sky’s the limit. My botanist friend told me that recently one of “the Services” managers, a Herman Goering wannabe, a skinny putrid bastard named Joe Riparian called an office wide meeting to try and address the growing discord that’s spreading throughout the refuse like some sort of malignancy. Of course, my friend, whom I consider a consummate scientist and professional (if not a bit of a healthy iconoclast) along with most of the rest of the place brought a litany of observations concerning the managements lack of management skills to the table….all except Mark O. Karl, who just sat in the back with that shit eating grin, finally raising his hand and commenting; “ Gee…..I don’t know what’s the problem…..I think management is doing a swell job here!”.

The management seems to have a problem with people who really produce

I think it’s the threat thing. Nobody is allowed to succeed, hell no. This might expose the Joe Riaprians, the Lenny Demerits and the Mark O. Karls, people who represent the vast majority of do-nothings that inhabit the nebulous ranks of the feral gumment like giant amoeba waiting for a handout to swim by.

My botanist friend has recently been demoted for his achievements, the labor of over 15 years of faithful service, and is now relegated to a welding,-tractor driver-herbicide applying drone. He observes; “this is why I got a masters degree….to spray roundup”.

I worked among these folks for a couple of years, on a peripheral job, driving a tram, and talking to busloads of gente and viejitos, working as an interpretive naturalist.

A volunteer during that time named Scary K was working there, along with her then boyfriend, Eupatorium. When they broke up, she spent a lot of time shitfaced, and at almost every refuse function she’d show up lit. Sometimes she’d show up over at my friends house, late at night with a case of beer. He told me that he’d drink maybe one or two, and she’d kill the rest of the case. He’d always make her clear out, just send her home, to her house where she had about 12 cats, a house always in disarray, and stinking of unkempt cats and dirty clothes.

We were all friends.

He coexisted with an old tomcat at the time, a refugee from the alleys of Weslaco, that he named Mr. Smudge, due to its dirty complexion. Mr. Smudge was ancient, and suffered from an ailment common to all old male cats, a urinary problem. He figured that he’d have to euthanize old Mr. Smudge as soon as he got back from visiting relatives up in middle America.

When he got back though, Scary K had taken Mr. Smudge to the veterinarian, and against everybody’s better judgment (including the veterinarian), had an operation performed to remove Mr. Smudges' penis and balls, routing the piss hole back to his asshole so that urine would not back up in his bladder.

My friend was livid. He said that from that point on, Mr. Smudge just dribbled piss wherever he went, looking more morose and forelorn tha ever. Mr Smudge, he said, would look up at him with big pleading eyes, as if to say; "just put me out of my misery..... Finally my friend took Mr. smudge back to the vet and had him put to sleep.

Then he received the bill for the piss-routing operation, which he had never authorized in the first place.

Scary K was on his shitlist for a while after that, but my friend being the good natured cuss that he is got over it, and the neurotic community that represents the finest of the feral gumments US Inefficient Wildlife service settled back to its normal state of abnormal.

Scary K kept up with her drinking, but it all finally came to a head one Christmas when she attended a Christmas party at the home of another employee, another outreach specialist named Corky Braunfels. Corky has a reputation of being a true feral gumment maestro, one who truly lives up to the creed; “Never do today what can be put of until tomorrow”.

According to my friend, who read the documents filed after the fact, everyone was drinking. Around midnight, ol’ Corky bursts into the living room, where his wife, Scary K, and another woman were seated, and waving a bottle of half consumed champagne, bellowed; “ WHO WANTS TO GET LICKED SUCKED AND FUCKED?”.

My friend wryly observed that this in reality, was a perfectly legitimate question, certainly one unworthy and uncalled for Scary K to file a sexual harassment charge over.

”Hell” he said….”Who wants to get licked, sucked and fucked?”…..

“Everybody does”.