Time: Monday, 16 August with flashbacks to Sunday, 15 August
Place: The Fiendish Glow
Follows: Pest Panic, Look What I Found in the Streets
Sukh, Heather, Pen, and Brenda are real and are used by permission.
Miguel, Consuela, and all the other Fiendish Glow staff and irregulars belong to The Fiendish Glow.
[The Fiendish Glow, Monday, 16 August, 1400 Eastern Daylight Time]
"Come on, stop dawdling!" an anxious Brenda nagged her fellow Glow Worms. "We've got to get down to the kitchens and start preparing for dinner."
"At two in the afternoon?" the MacCousin yawned, reaching for the clotted cream. Between telling stories 'til dawn and checking on Chris's injury, she hadn't fallen asleep until mid-morning.
"Restaurant cooking is not like cooking for your typical family of four," Brenda explained. "Some things have to be prepared in quantity hours or days in advance; other things have to be prepared individually as they are ordered. Everything must be fresh, hot foods hot, cold foods cold, and the customer should neither have to wait forever for anything nor be rushed through his meal. The first time you peel a fifty-pound bag of potatoes, you'll understand what I'm talking about."
"Fifty pounds of potatoes?" Sukh asked, stunned.
"Per bag," Pen told her. "We go through about a bag each week night, three to four bags each weekend night."
"Tha's equivalent tae one hundrid dinners each weeknight and three tae four hundrid brunches an' dinners each weekend night," Heather added helpfully. "Nae counting those diners who order dishes wha' dinna come wi' tatties..."
"Omigoddess!" Sukh gasped, never having really had to run the economics of cooking for hordes of people.
"Fortunately, we don't have to do everything while Miguel and Consuela are away -- just the main courses."
"How'd ye evvir get into doing this, ennaway?" Chris asked them.
--- FLASHBACK ---
[Security Control Room at The Fiendish Glow, Sunday 15 August, about 1430 Eastern Daylight Time]
"We've got a bit of a problem here," Brenda addressed the assembled staff. "Rats appear to be multiplying in the city beyond all mathematical probability and biological possibility. They're growing bolder, too -- a lot like New York City's rat population." A few of the staff murmured agreement with the assessment. "While I don't think we've seen any in the Glow -- yet -- we've just discovered evidence of rodent damage in goods received from our suppliers."
"Could this have something to do with the remortalized vamps?" one of the busboys asked. "I've heard rumors that because Screed isn't around to control the population, they're breeding out of control."
At this point in time, Pen and Brenda broke the proscenium long enough to remember that in "Blind Faith", Screed tells Nick that there's one other carouche in the city, who likes the park. This is the carouche that brought Perry across. He's known to be a meanie, a dog-chaser rather than a ratter. They also remember that based on the Screed scenes in "Black Buddah", it looks like Screed consumes no more than a dozen or so rats a night. With this information and the info they gathered on the Web, they repair the proscenium and return to the meeting.
"Statistics from various pest control specialists around the nation imply that the normal rat to human population in large cities such as Toronto ranges from one to five to as high as one to one. Given Toronto's population of approximately 2.3 million people, that means approximately 450,000 to 2.3 million rats in the city and its environs. As far as we know, there are -- were, anyway -- only two carouches in Toronto. Only one of them -- Screed -- consumed rats. Empirical evidence suggests that Screed consumed approximately one dozen rats a night -- less than one one-hundredth of one percent of the smallest estimated rat population. In short, Screed's cessation of rat-slurping has had no palpable effect upon Toronto's rat population."
"Even if Screed was only one of several hundred rat-eating carouches, we wouldn't be seeing as large a swell in the rat population as is being reported, nor in this narrow a timespan," Pen added.
"In short, the rodent problem has been around a lot longer than this War has been -- and it's not going to go away any time soon."
"So, what do we plan to do about it?" Pen asked, rhetorically.
"Glad you asked that, Pen. First, we double-check our own rat security -- repair any cracks in the walls and floorboards, replace old or worn floorboards, reseal the floors. Make sure no foods are left lying out for the rats to eat. Increase the frequency of haulers' visits to minimize the amount of trash sitting outside in the dumpster. That trash is food for rats."
"Without the vampires' sensitive hearing, I can -- at least for now -- add some ultrasonics to the background noise to discourage rats from coming or staying," Dennis volunteered.
"We can help the neighbors clean up their homes and properties to further discourage rats from staying around," Siobhan added.
"That would be good for public relations, too," Pen smiled.
"Any rat that still insists on coming must be eradicated with extreme prejudice," Brenda finished. "Traps, poison, baits, firearms... We have a business -- and a community -- to protect."
"One problem with that," Pen broke in.
"We got kids and good animals around," Brenda replied, remembering the couple of cats Miguel said hung around the place.
"Another problem," Pen said.
"Rats'll ignore th' bait if there's real food arund," Miguel noted.
"We could put real food out for bait and poison it," Brenda suggested, hopefully.
"Moas' effaictive rat poisons ur illegal in Ontario," someone else added.
"Okay, so what options does that leave us?" the Glow Worms asked, bringing the random conversation to its conclusion.
Daniel, Miguel, and Consuela looked at each other. "We'll handle it," they said. "Give us two days to get the parts, and we'll come back with a solution you can live with."
Pen and Brenda gave each other "the look". It was a look they'd rehearsed before -- a look that said they were skeptical, but which meant that they'd entered the final stages of bargaining mode. Both knew that they did not want to know what the boys would really be up to, but that they could rely on their word to have that solution in place and working when they said they would.
--- END FLASHBACK ---
"And they will be back either tomorrow or Wednesday," Brenda confidently asserted.
"If the rats an' the Customs officers dinna git tae them first," MacHeather commented drily.
"And if we don't blow up the kitchen first," Pen added.
"Have some faith in experience," Brenda winked. "I've cooked for crowds before; I can handle the equipment -- and if I need to, I can always call my father and ask him. Now let's get the show on the road, shall we?"
Quoted from
http://www.nextcity.com/main/town/10urban.htm, 1998:
A pair of Norway rats, Canada's most common species, have up to seven
litters per year, each of 8 to 12 young, or a potential 15,000 new rats
annually.
Pest controllers disagree about how many rats live in
Canadian cities.
McCarthy disputes the much quoted one-to-one ratio
of rats and humans, "Maybe that was the case in the 1700s and 1800s,
when wooden cargo ships brought new rats to port every day, but those
numbers are just an urban myth now." John Van of Vancouver's B.C.
Pest Control estimates that 10 to 15 per cent of Vancouver -- the tony
parts -- do have as many rats as humans.
"There's not enough
food for rats in the poorer parts of Vancouver; they much prefer the
affluent areas where people throw away large amounts of food, compost
improperly, and keep horses."
Brenda's dad's father spent some time as a restauranteur by profession; her father spent his youngest years in and around the business. Her own experience is somewhat more limited, her large-group cooking being relegated to weekly cooperative cooking for the 30 residents of her college dormitory... between 1978 and 1982.
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NEXT STORIES: FAER AFIELD
and YOU WON'T SHINE IF YOU DON'T GLOW
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