“Did that kid really just flip me off?”
I generally don’t receive thoughtful rebuttals.
“Andy McGinn is dumb,” they’ll say via Speak Up.
“McGinn is an idiot.”
“I hope McGinn winds up in a third-world jail and contracts typhus.”
Last year, however, when I wrote a column declaring the Upper Valley Mall to be “depressing,” it drove Clark County Commissioner John Detrick to write a guest column defending “the third-largest mall in the Miami Valley.”
At last.
This wasn’t just another anonymous Speak Up.
Detrick thoughtfully noted the role of the mall in the county’s economy — and I made a mental note to never vote for him again.
But then, Detrick couldn’t just drop it.
It’s clear he saw in me the potential for a new archenemy — a Cheetah to his Wonder Woman.
After all, he decided to further antagonize me by sending his henchman — his 11-year-old grandson — to dunk me seven times in a dunking booth during a fundraiser at the mall.
I nearly died.
Well, I could have.
I mean, they initially wanted to fill the dunk tank with water from Buck Creek before I pitched a fit.
Can you say Hepatitis E?
But that was the last I’d heard from Detrick until last week, when he coerced the paper’s county reporter into delivering a package to me on his behalf.
Wrapped in a black garbage sack and clearly possessing some heft, my co-worker slung it my way.
“It’s a gift,” she informed me, “from a county commissioner.”
She didn’t have to say which one.
“Oh my God,” I feared, “it’s a horse’s head.”
And sure enough, I spotted some kind of brownish fur as I peeked inside.
I decided to just reach in and grab the thing — and I pulled out a giant dead rodent mounted rather nicely on a rustic log base.
I recognized this particular mammal.
Marmota monax.
A groundhog.
“Did it scare you?” Detrick wondered afterward.
Yes. Yes it did, John. It’s a giant freaking rodent on a stick.
“Once you get past the scary part,” he explained, “it’s quite a unique animal.
“It’s quite industrious.”
Oh, quite.
Inside a burrow, you’ll find completely different rooms designated for sleeping, nesting and pooping.
I interpreted the mounted woodchuck as Detrick’s idea of a peace offering.
The man is, after all, from Donnelsville.
Out in western Clark County, I’ve been told they bestow a dead animal on you if they like you.
Detrick apparently had this groundhog in his possession for some time, which isn’t at all surprising.
Not too long ago, he found himself infatuated with a 60-pound beaver that turned up as roadkill.
“Cost me $400 to have it mounted,” he said, “but it’s now in the Heritage Center and it’s their top attraction.”
Regarding the groundhog, though, his wife wanted it out of the house.
“I heard you would be the person most intrigued by it,” he said.
Naturally.
But fully knowing what my own wife would say, I cleared off a spot for it on my newsroom desk.
That same day, it sent a pregnant co-worker to the bathroom to upchuck.
Word went around that she was going to make a Human Resources issue out of the dead groundhog now keeping watch over my Micky Dolenz bobblehead.
But I quickly grew attached to my new friend.
I envisioned us growing old and rotting together — if only he didn’t make me feel itchy.
At first, I thought it was just in my head.
Then, one by one, bugs started crawling out of the log base.
The pregnant chick freaked.
I knew what I had to do.
As I rewrapped it in a new garbage sack — really the only way to contain the bugs — it was like having to put down Old Yeller.
But the damage had been done.
We’d all contracted typhus.
Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.
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