Three Ninjas

My friend and I went to a trail I know of to look at swamp stuff and be in nature, and I was hoping I'd find some moss because I thought it would be neat to see if I could grow some moss. I'm really into growing aquatic plants lately.

When we were walking back and could see the parking lot from the trail I saw that there were rangers looking into the windows of my car, and I saw one of them point at my license plate and get excited. I saw their vehicles marked "law enforcement". I know my tags are expired, I know I'm uninsured, so I knew what was about to happen.

I had in my hands a trowel, a box of ziplock bags, and three ziplock bags containing: a clump of moss, a few stems of a plant I think might be Ludwigia sp. that I am experienced with keeping, and some frogbit, a floating plant similar to duckweed. Very small amounts of each.

My friend who was with me was walking ahead of me and I was still trying pretend that everything was cool just in case it was, and I passed a part of the canal where an alligator was earlier so I stopped for a second to see if I could still see him. I heard Bad Cop harshly interrogating my friend:

"I want to know why you let these tags stay expired for so long."

Like what the hell dude. What the fuck do you think the reason is. So she told him it wasn't her car. Bad Cop didn't even ask (I guess that's one reason he's Bad Cop). I walked up then and said it's my car, and he asked the same question, demanding to know why my tags had been expired since 2015, and at this point he tried to work out in his head how many years and months had passed since June of 2015. It took longer than you might expect. 

He was legitimately angry, at me, over expired tags. Like I did it to spite him personally.

"Because I'm poor and it's incredibly expensive to have those things changed over." I still have Washington tags and plates.

When he saw the bags with plants in them, the look on his face made it seem like he thought he was bringing down a notorious meth lab. He asked me if I knew it was illegal to collect that from national parks. I said that I didn't even know this was part of the park. I see people fishing here all the time so I was under the impression that it was not part of the park.

He explained to me that people are allowed to take things tht have to do with food, and that what I had done was a crime. Well fuck.

He asked me what my intentions where with the plants. I said for my aquariums.

"Aquariums, what kind of aquariums?"

I was pretty annoyed. "This one is for a 2 gallon planted tank, these are for my 10 gallon, and this moss is to see if I can propagate moss."  

"Why do you want to propagate moss?"

"...To see if I can."

"So like a science experiment?"

"Yes like a science experiment. Biology is what I do." At this point I indicated my two sciencey tattoos on my arms. He explained that there are invasive species in there, we don't know if you're taking those. I said, "Yes...I know." I wanted to say that I almost certainly knew more about invasives than he did.

“Are you planning on making money off of this moss?” I said, “Uh, I don’t think people...buy moss...”

He told me that some people put them in vials with crystals for healing power or something. I was like no, I definitely do not do that.

At some point during this he asked to take the trowel I had in my hand, which I'd been using to scratch my back. We each had dozens of mosquito bites from the trail.

Then he asked my friend what she'd collected. She said she hadn't collected anything and I agreed with her. He asked her why her arm was in a sling. Whey the fuck did he need to know that? So she told him why, and he asked if her ID was in the satchel at her side under her slinged arm, and if he could reach in and get her ID. Wow. Motherfucker.

She consented and he examined the contents of her purse. She had a small container of pills and he asked what they were, and she said they were xanax.

"Why aren't they in the bottle?"

"Because the bottle's huge!" she said.

Bad Cop interjected at this point telling me to take a deep breath, these were just misdemeanors. I started to take a deep breath, said fuck it, and just breathed normally and stared at him.

He asked to see my registration and insurance. From the look on my face he correctly deduced that I had no insurance. Maybe he's actually an OK cop. I said, "My insurance expired." He asked me how long ago and I said I wasn't sure, maybe a year.

He told me that he could not allow me to drive my car out of this parking lot without insurance. That got me panicking but I think I swallowed it well.

He then asked me about the signs in my car. I was confused and said, "What signs?" I had a poster board in my back seat that said, "It's my birthday, can I please have a hug?" that I made for my birthday, but surely that's not a thing that would arouse a cop's suspicion.

I gave him too much credit. That's exactly what he was talking about. So I explained to him that it was for my birthday and I brought that to Bourbon Street. He said that sometimes people panhandle or whatever and ask for money, and he was wondering if I had any "involvement in that, no judgement." Dude. You gotta be fucking kidding me.

Then he asks if I have any other illegal contraband in my vehicle and I said no. He started going down his mental list (I'm kind of proud of him for being able to keep a mental list, he's obviously a good and big boy), "Weapons?" No. "Drugs?" No. "Heroin?" No. "Cocaine?" No, no kind of drugs. "Marijuana?" Still no kinds of drugs.

Then he asked to search my car. I said, "Am I legally obligated to allow you to do that?" He said, "It's gonna be one way or the other." I regret not asking what the other way was. He said people lie to him and usually he finds things. At this point I remembered that I did have animal bones in my trunk, and I was worried he'd find them on his own and worst case scenario think they were human bones and I didn't want that at all, so I told him about them. He said that I'm not allowed to have animal specimens on national park grounds. I said, "Even if I didn't collect them here?" "How do I know that? I just caught you with contraband. Where did you get them?" In the woods. "What woods where?" I don't remember, they've been in there for years. Biology is my thing, when I find specimens like that I collect them.

He asked me to show him the bones, so I opened my trunk and showed him. While I was rifling around in there (I have an inflatable raft that takes up most of the trunk) he said, “You just don’t want me going through your stuff, I understand.” I said, “I don’t want *any* strangers going through my stuff.”

 I guess he was feeling merciful because he didn't search the rest of my car, just asked to see my registration and the most recent insurance card I had. It took me a while to find my registration because I was nervous and my glove box is in disarray and I hadn't needed to find it in a while. Eventually I did. I said, “Here’s the most recent one. I left Seattle in April of ‘15 and this expired in June of ‘15.” Bad Cop is all, “Why’d you leave Seattle? I hear it’s nice.” “Because I lost my job and had to move back in with my family. ALSO WHY I’M POOR.” I said it just like that, in all caps. He went to his SUV and my friend and I just waited.

This whole time there was a whole nother cop here, but he didn't say anything. In my head he's Good Cop, not because he's a good guy, but you know, just relative to Bad Cop. He tried not to show it but I think he was embarrassed at the behavior of his buddy.

I was anxious and angry and didn't want to stare at nothing in silence so I took out my phone. Good Cop says, "Sir, I'm sorry, it's a police thing, you can't be on your phone."

What the fricking fuck. What do you think might happen that you don't want to get on film?  But I didn't say this, I just put my phone away.

Bad Cop asked if there was anyone I knew who could pick us up. At this my point my friend, God fucking bless her, she is the savior of my life right now, said that she was insured, could she drive?

Bad Cop was really reluctant about this but eventually allowed it after explaining to her all the horrible ways in which the world would end if she got in a wreck. My friend was like, "I just won't get in a wreck..."

After what felt like a week but was probably ten minutes, Bad Cop called me over (he consistently mispronounced my name) to his vehicle.

He said he’s going to give me the benefit of the doubt about the bones in my trunk. He explained that I had three charges, the tags, the insurance, and the collection of the plants. He explained that these were federal charges, and I'd have to go to court in New Orleans. He also said, "I know it may not seem like it, but I'm letting you off easy. I did not have to let her drive. Your car would have been in impound for a long, long time." Man, fuck this guy. But he had this over my head so I swallowed my anger and thanked him. I signed the slips, I asked him how I'd know my court date. He told me they'd be mailing me something, or I could write to the address he indicated on the slips. I asked why it was in Philadelphia.

He kind of sighed and said, "It's not in Philadelphia." He really thought I was asking why the court house where I'd have to go for my hearing was in Philadelphia. "I said, no, why is this mailing address a Philadelphia address?" And he said, "I don't know...I don't know....it's federal."

Then he said, "Also make sure I don't let you leave without giving your shovel back." Yeah, that definitely would have ruined my day.

So that was basically it, and he was done with me, and he said, I swear to God this really happened, he said, "I wish we could have met under better circumstances."

So I have a jar and a vase filled with potting soil, mud from the canal, and plants I collected from the canal, and they’re both filled the rest of the way with water. There are some cool things in there. But also, there are mosquitos in my house and they are laying eggs in all my watery sciency stuff. Fuccckc.

Anyway the first picture is one of those eggs. You can see the head of the larva, it’s the dark oval near the top. There’s a video of it that makes this more obvious.

Guarding the doors of Walmart was an army of demonic sun conures but they were as big as cockatoos and angry and there was fire and brimstone everywhere and they were hissing an evil hiss.

So I bought the bow and took it back out to the archery people. Then I stepped into my tent, which I guess I now lived in. It was like a big tent like you see in Bible movies. The size of like a bedroom. As I was going in, Bob Saget was coming out. He was drunk and looking for the bathroom.