Eggs and issues

When we arrived at work here at the News & Review last Monday, we were greeted with a gruesome sight. Someone had thrown eggs against the windows of our building. Broken shells and egg innards bore mute testimony to the carnage that had visited the night before. What was the message? Was this a random act of mindless vandalism or something else? The attack was directed at the first floor, where the business and sales offices exist, which means the argument could be made that the editorial end of this company was not the target of this drive-by shelling. But then, what if the egg-thrower—or throwers—weren’t aware of the configuration within our building? Was it something we wrote? Who did we offend? I thought of the possible suspects: the Downtown Chico Business Association (Katrina Davis, executive director of the DCBA assured me it wasn’t her or anyone connected with her organization and gave me what sounded like a legitimate alibi—she was hanging with a bunch of 13-year-old girls on the night in question. Wait a second.) What about Bill Fishkin, editor of the Synthesis? He sometimes has a bone to pick with this paper. He’s publicly stated that when he gets hit, he hits back harder. And those eggs looked pretty scrambled. But Bill’s busy having a baby; he’s got no time for such sophomoric shenanigans. (This just in: Fishkin’s baby born at 5 a.m., May 19.) Maybe it was a Jeff Sloan supporter. Or a Scott Brown fan. I’m not sure who we’ve offended in that sordid affair.

Then I got to thinking: Maybe I was looking at this all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t us; maybe it was the eggs themselves. Perhaps someone had just purchased the eggs. Maybe this person meant to buy some of those brown, organic-looking eggs but forgot to check the contents of the carton while still in the store and ended up buying the regular old white kind. As he’s walking past our building he thinks to look at the eggs. When he sees the white eggs the guy freaks out because if his new health-conscious girlfriend, who’s waiting at home for the eggs to arrive, sees this more common variety, she will realize he’s not the organic guy he painted himself as when they first met at the Saturday Farmers’ Market the day before. So he panics and launches the eggs at the nearest target—our building. He’s so upset, in fact, that he runs three-quarters of the way around the building, hurling eggs all the while. That sounds like a much more feasible explanation for the egg attack, in my opinion.

A big thanks to the students who put out The Roadrunner, the Butte College newspaper that somehow managed to get published even though it had no office or phone or place to call home. In fact, for part of the semester, the paper was living in somebody’s garage, begging for spare change and collecting aluminum cans. Despite it all, a handful of dedicated people with bright futures got the paper out three times during the semester, and now it will live to see another school year.

Things we witness: A dog, some sort of German shepherd deal, jumps from a second-story window in the Garden Walk Mall, or maybe the Brick Works, and runs across City Parking Lot No. 1 toward our building. We look out our window in time to see the dog finish his limping journey across the parking lot and flop down in Flume Street next to the curb and in a small puddle left from the morning rain, Two women walk behind the dog, trying to help it. A Chico cop arrives, pulls his vehicle over and watches. The Animal Control truck arrives. The Animal Control officer gets out, walks to the back of her truck and pulls out a leash on a stick. We feel like we’re watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. The Animal Control officer walks toward the dog with the leash on a stick extended in front of her. Wanting no part of this, the dog gets up and limps south on Flume. The cop and the control officer follow in their vehicles. The dog limps all the way to its home on Eighth Street, but there’s nobody home. People gather. The owners finally come home. It’s emotional. The cop and the Animal Control officer leave. The dog, which has injured legs, is loaded into a car and, we assume, taken to a vet.