Faucets
The Fly and the Spider
The spider came down from her lair to talk to the fly entangled in the web.
“I’m glad to see you,” the fly said. “I can’t seem to get free from these sticky filaments. I know you’ll help me.”
The spider said: “Indeed.”
“It’ll be a close call,” the fly said.
“Let me tell you about a real close call,” the spider replied. She pointed with one of her legs. “Do you see that sink and faucet down there.”
The spider’s funnel-shaped web occupied a upper corner toilet. A great distance away, the fly saw a discolored porcelain basin with an faucet poised over a drain. The faucet seemed to be encrusted with something, possibly toothpaste that had been negligently spat onto the plumbing.
“I had a very nice, compact little web, right behind the faucet,” the spider said. “It’s was a bit breezy when the water was running but otherwise very nice. The little critters that I favor came up to the rim of the faucet to sip the droplets hovering there and would be caught in my web.”
The fly would have blinked his big prismatic eyes but he had no eyelids.
“One day, a man came to the sink, turned on the flood at the faucet, and, then, cupped his hand to catch a fistful of water. He flung the water on me. Instantly, my web was ripped asunder and I fell down into the porcelain basin. This was completely sadistic – I wasn’t harming anyone in my neat, little web hanging like a hammock behind the faucet.”
The spider sighed.
“I guess I have only myself to blame for what happened next. I was lying in the porcelain with my legs tied in knots and shivering in the cold and, it occurred to me that I was terribly exposed – just flat on my belly on the expanse of filthy porcelain, a sitting duck for a bird and anyone who wanted to squash me.”
“You don’t typically find birds in houses,” the fly said.
“It’s just a figure of speech,” the spider replied. “In any event, I could see the drain only a short distance away and it looked very dark and inviting. So I straightened out my legs and skedaddled as quickly as I could toward that drain. But the edges were slick and I had difficulty maintaining traction on that chute and, so, I began to slide into the hole. At that point, the man turned on the water again and a huge crushing bludgeon of a cascade smashed me straight down the pipe.”
“Terrible,” the fly said.
“The jet of water was pouring onto a pool caught in the place where the pipe was curved below and, somehow, one of my feet caught on a tiny extruded lip surrounding the pool – apparently, it was a connection between the pipes. After what seemed an eternity, the powerful bore of falling water ceased, replaced by only a few, big cold drops. I was half knocked-out from the concussion of the water that had battered me and delirious with fear. It was an absolutely awful place, a deep, dark well filled with freezing water. Slowly, each instant fearing that the faucet would be turned-on again, I crept up the inside of the pipe. It was slick as ice, although I guess I don’t have any first-hand knowledge about what ice is.”
“I’ve seen it,” the fly replied. “It’s very cold and slippery and comes in cubes floating in cups of strongly scented and poisonous fluid.”
“Well, terrified, as you can imagine, I gradually made my way up that horrible pipe to the porcelain basin. I don’t need to tell you that vamoosed right out of there. I scrambled up the wall as far from that faucet as I could go and, at last, found this comfy place to spin my web.”
“I congratulate you on your escape,” the fly said. “So can you help me out of this tangle?”
The spider shook her head. She said: “No, now, I will have to eat you.”
Black Water
It was during the season of racial unrest that the water in our town turned black. One morning, people turned spigots in their houses and dark brown or black water poured from their plumbing. We recoiled in horror – the water seemed filthy, gushing down into sinks and bathtubs. It was all shades of brown and black – sometimes, the water was so dark that it looked almost bluish; on other occasions, the water was only slightly tinted, a color like caramel or diluted root beer. Most of the time the tap ran with muddy-looking dark brown water mixed with a color like weak coffee.
Of course, no one could bear to drink this stuff. People complained that the black water didn’t clean anything, although this was untrue. When something was washed in the filthy-looking fluid, the water washed away dirt just as effectively as if it were transparent.
When you held the water up to the light, it was apparent that the hue was in the water itself – there didn’t seem to be anything dissolved in the fluid. No particles were visible. Immediately, several chemists were hired by the City Waterworks to assay the water coming from our taps and stored in the several majestic turquoise-colored water towers around town. The chemists concluded that there were no toxins in the water, nothing dangerous dissolved in the fluid – it was simply water that had become tinted by some unknown agent. In short, the water was completely potable.
But this didn’t matter. People hesitated to drink the stuff and despised washing with it. No one wanted to take a shower or bath in a flood of brown-black water and, so, hygiene in our city suffered. Some of the poor and elderly who couldn’t afford bottled water became seriously dehydrated. People stumbled a round our city streets, stinking of body odor, and delirious with thirst.
There was no way to get rid of the tint in the water. Even if you were fully convinced – on a conscious level – that the water was harmless and, even, salubrious, when you quaffed a glass of the stuff you seemed to smell a faint, nauseating stench. It was disconcerting. And, yet, people continued to drink coffee, which is, of course, approximately the same color.
At last, complaints to the City became overwhelming. The municipal water works were closed and the water mains flushed and the towers drained – seas of black and brown water were poured down into the sewers. Then, the taps were sealed and, after a levy that cost each of us several thousand dollars, a contract was made with another town a dozen miles away. Big tanker trucks were dispatched to that town and water was pumped into those vehicles and brought daily to our village for distribution to the people.
The water from the other town wasn’t very good. It tasted of chlorine and was hard with corrosive minerals, but, at least, it wasn’t black or brown.
