Fishing in Vain Zoonotics, or, Be Mine

Today, I searched for the giant squid in Bat Lake, formerly Bait Lake (the name changed in 1968, for cautionary measures). I thought about how meaning always changes when one removes an I, becomes winged, and a little toothy. For bait, I used bat. Even the cat knows: that’s not true. Here’s the truth: for bait, I dismantled my wife’s tea cozy—the one sewn of the spitballs fashioned from the six-page Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division Report #2946, dated May 20, 1983, on Rabid Bats in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (abridged version). The unabridged version, I’ve heard, is supposed to be really disturbing. I cast and, given that this is Valentine’s Day, I thought of so many Upper Midwestern hearts beating with the panic and zoonoticism (not as sexy as it sounds) of rabies—the poor hearts of foxes, skunks, cows, horses, the frothy lips of dachshunds, and dilated pupils of the raccoons. The rabid silver-haired bat of Escanaba had, in 1968, ignited an epidemic with legs—the sort of epidemic the DNR is compelled to call “unfortunate,” inspiring them to devise all sorts of contemporary rabies tests for bats, using such classic methods as “impression smears of brain material,” and “3-pound coffee cans containing chloroform-saturated cotton balls.” My lure snagged a yellow short-sleeve shirt with an alligator on the breast pocket, and a pair of lefty scissors. I closed my eyes, prayed for squid, performed a few textbook air-cuts with the scissors, even though I’m a righty. My wife’s tea was getting cold. I recited to myself a treatise on love amid despair. I pulled another ball from the tea cozy that read...species, sex, acetone, and age. It’s been a tough winter. Nothing blind screamed overhead. Everything that screamed was able to see just fine.

Matthew Gavin Frank