Sometimes, despite us doing our best, some people won't mind their own business.
Our Story Begins
We all love animals. We all love dogs, especially rescue dogs. We all step in when we think an animal is being harmed. But sometimes, sometimes, people get crazy and start to lose their minds. While they may have good intentions, sometimes these people can be straight up nuts.
Let us set the scene for you. The victim in this place is an innocent man named Phil. Phil lives alone with his lizard. He just wants to be left alone and enjoy his life. Some may say that living alone with a lizard is a little weird, but hey, to each their own. Maybe a lizard is a really rewarding pet.
Either way, Phil was minding his own business. And people minding their own business should be left alone. But some people can’t help themselves.
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Food For His Friend
Phil’s lizard is called Bert. And Bert likes to eat live crickets and worms. These worms and crickets only live for a few days, and they’re very healthy and natural natural food for Bert. So every Tuesday, Phil takes a tram to the local pet store to buy crickets and worms for Bert. It’s unfortunate that other animals have to die for his lizard, but it’s no different than a cat or dog when you think about it.
On this momentous day, Phil is on the train minding his own business, bag of crickets and worms in his arm, on his way back to Bert. The bag tends to move around a bit as the crickets try to escape, so you can imagine Phil gets some looks. Unbeknownst to Phil, the bag has caught the eye of a curious kid. This kid then decides to walk up and start grabbing the bag, as kids do. This is where the trouble starts.
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A Curious Encounter
Phil pulls the bag back from the kid to avoid ripping the bag and spilling live crickets onto the train. The kid stumbles as he’s not holding on to anything. Being polite, Phil says to the kid, “Oh, sorry little buddy, didn’t see you there, are you OK?”
The kid says nothing and continues staring at the bag. The sound from inside the plastic is getting more intense as the crickets have been disturbed by all the commotion. He’s not annoyed by the kid, if he was that age, Phil would probably want to see what is in the bag too! Phil looks up and sees the kid’s mom staring daggers at him, then goes straight back to the phone she had been so involved in. You would think a mom would be more concerned about her kid walking off, but apparently not.
It was at the point Phil gets a bad feeling.
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A Bug’s Life
Phil, on seeing that the kid was clearly curious “I kneel down to the kid and open the bag a bit to reveal 3 plastic containers, two contains about 10 crickets each and bottom one has mealworms in it. Crickets at the top are bright yellow/greenish and now making a lots of ruckus, as more light is going into the bag, prompting crickets to try to escape from their containers.”
The kid looks up and says, “Whoaaaaa, that’s so cool!” Phil is pretty used to this reaction. It’s either that or people say “Ewwwwww” and walk away.
Phil, trying to make small talk with the kid says, “Yeah, I’m feeding these bugs to my little lizard, crickets are his favorite bugs.” Bert really does love bugs, you can see it on his little scaly face.
Turns out, Phil should have ignored the curious kid in the first place.
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Misheard Words
Suddenly the kids starts yelling, “Mommy, Mommy, there are a-mi-nals in the bag. Mommy, there are, amani–, animani–, animals in the bag. Come and look at the animals in the bag! Bogs in the bag! There’s circr–, cickre–, crikihi–, chi-huahua! Biiig bogs!” (Sounds like “dogs” more than “bugs”).
Phil isn’t sure how old the kid is, but he seems to be screaming way louder than is needed.
All the while, the kid is pointing at Phil and his bag of crickets.
Phil remembers thinking to himself, “Ok, maybe I could give the kid a cricket or two.” But he knows exactly what will happen — the kid will let the cricket out and the tram will turn to chaos. He wasn’t making that mistake again.
Phil decides not to, and was in a good mood after a generally nice interaction with the kid.
If only he knew what was coming.
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The Accusations Begin
Suddenly, Phil hears a loud huff. He looks over and angry mom, aka Nancy, is putting down her phone and staring daggers at him. She approaches with such gusto Phil is convinced she must be looking at someone behind him. But no, it’s for him.
“Wait, you have a dog in the bag? That is no place for an animal. It’ll suffocate like that,” Nancy yells as she marches towards Phil. “You need a proper leash for it and let it walk free. That sort of bag is very bad for the dog.”
Phil is pretty confused at this point. Is she talking about his bag? Having a dog in it? He had gotten some weird reactions before but this was new.
All of a sudden, she goes for the bag. She really goes for it. Phil is holding onto the rail on a tram, pulling the bag away from her like some sort of slapstick comedy. In his head Phil still thinks she wants a cricket for her kid, but the real reason is so much weirder.
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It’s None Of Her Business
Really, it’s none of her business what is in the bag. It does have live insects in it, and Phil always feels bad for the insects, but it’s what Bert needs to eat. Phil is trying to explain this to Nancy as she is still furiously trying to grab his bag.
“Oh, no, this just food for my liz…” Phil starts to say before being cut off by the raging woman.
“Shut it. I know better than you. I know people working in animal shelters. I have cats and dogs, I know how to handle them. Now hand the bag over and let’s see it!”
Now, if Nancy really does think there is a dog in the plastic bag, it’s totally reasonable to ask Phil about it. But the way she goes about doing this and her inability to listen go above and beyond rational behavior.
Phil still can’t believe it, does she seriously think that’s what is happening here?
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Medusa’s Stare
Maybe it’s best if Phil describes how this raging beast of a woman looks, “She has this look like she’s my elementary school teacher with authority to discipline me and confiscate my bag to inspect it.”
We all know that look, it shakes you to your core. Phil is significantly taller than Nancy so her attempts to grab the bag aren’t working.
Nancy, as she is trying to grab the bag but can’t get a grip on it yells out, “Give it here! You should not have any animals, you are torturing them like that! Now, give it to me!”
Phil tries to take a step back from Nancy, all the while yelling out, “It’s OK, these are crickets and worms and not going to live for more than a few days until…”
This whole mess would have been solved if she had just listened to him, but she had made her mind up from the start.
In an attempt to quell the woman’s anger, Phil tries to open the bag to show her that there are no dogs, but crickets in the bag, but reason doesn’t seem to work with this vicious Nancy.
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What Is She Trying To Do
As Phil tries to open the bag, Nancy is furiously grabbing at it. This makes it impossible for Phil to open the bag and show Nancy the contents. Phil keeps trying to explain that there are only insects here, but Nancy seems to have selective hearing.
“What!?” cried out Nancy, still not listening to anything Phil is saying and still thinking that somehow a dog could fit in such a small bag. “You are planning to kill it, and on purpose!? Hand it over! Right now!”
Phil attempts once again to tell her that his bag contains bug and not dogs, stating, “Oh no. These are crickets. And meal worms. And yes, I bought these for food for another pet, so their end is near. The shop that sells these is at…”
While she should be listening, Nancy is grabbing and yelling at Phil for what she thinks is the worst case of animal abuse, “Don’t lie to me! And I said NOW! Hand it over! Give me that bag! NOW! I said NOW! Can’t you hear me! N-O-W!”
At this point all Phil can do is laugh, but that’s when bystanders start stepping in.
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A Puppy?
It starts with the tram guards, who look over and see a seething lady trying to grab a bag out of a young man’s hand. Having seen enough, they walk over to see what all the fuss is about. Phil has been taking this tram for about five years now, so the guards know who he is. It must have been a strange sight, even for the seasoned guards.
As they approach the commotion, the guards are cut off by Nancy, who’s still yelling, “This guy has a puppy in the plastic bag and it’s going to suffocate! He told me so and I saw the dog! It’s chihuahua puppy! Arrest that man! I’m going to take the puppy from him! Give it here! Animal haters like him should not keep dogs! Give it here! Here I said, before you kill it!”
Phil has just about had it at this point, but this is just the beginning.
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She Climbs Him
Nancy decides to take her antics to the next level and jumps for Phil’s bag again, this time attempting to climb up Phil’s body like some sort of crazed monkey. One of the guards pulls her off down and says, “Miss, please stop. Calm down. We’ll check the problem.”
The guards, Phi, and everyone else on the tram have no idea what this insane woman is thinking or what she thinks is going to happen when she tried to climb a person on a moving train, but everyone knows that logic is nothing but a distant memory now.
“Get off from me you crazy bat and don’t touch my crickets,” Phil yells as he fights off the raging woman. As he does this, he does something he probably shouldn’t have done, but it feels so good. Channeling his inner Nancy, Phil looks into her eyes and does a no-no-finger-shake on her and mutters tsk-tsk-tsk with a grin.
God that must have felt good, but he had to know it as going to escalate things.
And escalate things it did. This little action sent Nancy to the deep end.
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Then It Escalates
Now fuming and raging about the train, Nancy attempts to plead her case to the guards and everyone else who’s watching this trainwreck of commute, “But he has a puppy that he is killing! I own animal shelter, that sort of person should not keep dogs! That is animal cruelty and he should be in jail! He will drown the puppy!”
Phil, still trying to reason with her, yells out once more, “No, I don’t and no, I am not! I have crickets! And worms! Bugs!” Phil still can’t understand how she doesn’t understand what’s going on. He is basically screaming back at her at this point. The other people on the train look like they don’t know if they should be confused or mortified or both, but they just stand there, wondering why on earth what is going on between this man and this screaming lady.
Finally, the guard steps in between the two and asks to look in Phil’s bag. Phil happily hands it to him and says, “These are bugs for my lizard. I don’t have a dog or such, I have no idea what she is about. She must be crazy with that dog nonsense. You’ve seen me before with the same bag many times.”
The guard and Phil share a laugh, realizing that no, he is not torturing puppies in his plastic bag. IF he was, the guards would probably have dragged Phil to the police there and then.
The guards then turn their attention to the screaming woman behind them and decide to handle this once and for all.
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Guards To The Rescue
“Miss, you need to calm down,” said one of the guards as he tried to make sense of everything. “There are no dogs being harmed. Those are just some crickets he has and…”
Nancy who is extremely anti-calm: “You lie too! I saw it in my own eyes! Murderer!! Loud obscenities that I don’t understand. He has a dying puppy in there! He’s going to kill it and it’s dying! Give it here! I said give it here! It will get a good home with us!” What is truly strange is that she hadn’t seen anything. She had only heard her child, that she was basically ignoring now, mispronounce a word and then decide to climb a man on the kids word. Not exactly a good choice.
The guards look at each other like “is this woman serious.” This clearly angers Nancy more, and she suddenly tries to bull rush through them, flailing her arms trying to get to Phil and his ‘bag of puppies’. A small woman older woman bull rushing two full-grown security guards went about as well as you would assume. Phil decided it was his time to remove himself from the situation.
But as he did, Nancy lunged forward once more and yelled out, “Look! Now he’s just walking away! Arrest him! You need to call the police! Animal cruelty is not acceptable! He’s getting away! Do something! He’s getting away! You are in conspiracy with him, aren’t you?!”
This is when the guards lost what little patience they had left.
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The Hissy Fit
The guards start to remove Nancy from the tram. It takes a good 30 seconds for her to realize what is happening. She gives the guard a look of absolute shock, like she’s never been told off in her entire life. She decides that the best thing to deal with this is to berate the guards about their life choices, and how dare they do this to her. It’s not often you get to see a grown woman throwing a hissy fit. Phil looked over to the kid who is happily playing a game on his iPad. Phil guessed the kid has probably seen his mom to this before. A word to the wise, when you want your way, don’t scream and shout at people, it never works.
Thankfully it didn’t end too badly for the poor kid.
The next tram was only five minutes away, so the ranting and raving by Nancy seemed a bit over the top, considering it was a beautiful day outside. As the tram is rolling away Nancy is still yelling about dead puppies, while the guards are still trying to explain to her that it was insects.
In the end, no one got hurt, except maybe Nancy’s pride. Which, we can all admit that maybe it needed to be beaten down a bit.
Phil got home in time to feed Bert, who has very pleased with his insect dinner. Overall, a very strange and eventful day, leading Phil to think that maybe next time he’ll take a backpack.
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