Baby Poodles Left in the Care of a Vulture

Last week the humidity here in the midwest made life feel like vicious hell in a waffle iron. Nothing new there. But one news story preoccupied Candy Rant in a way that made her feel like gnawing her own hand off.

There's this fantastically good local chocolatier (that there means somebody what makes choklit) who had to close up shop during the crazy-ass heat wave because even with air conditioning, they could not keep their chocolates from melting. They decided to lock up and wait out the heat.

So there I was, safe in my little house, in my cushy, cozy bed, and life was pretty good. Except for the knowledge that just a couple miles from me, there was a lonely gathering of hundreds of melty chunks of delectable chocolate. Behind one cruelly locked door. I could picture stealthily tip-toeing up to the plate glass window, and whipping my tongue out in a lewd and frightening way that would at first alarm the little candies. Already sweaty from their trial with humidity, they would gather together, circling their wagons to discuss the scary woman pressed against the door, her eyes spinning in her head like 2 K-tel Salad Shooters.

I imagined how I would coax them to the door, to talk them into forming a big gooey pile, tall enough to flip that pesky lock from horizontal to vertical. Just a simple click, you sweet little chocolates. I would direct my wooing toward the nougat first, the faux Three Musketeers. The nougats are not smart, as candies go. They can be talked into anything. And besides, I'd want them on the bottom of the pile, to keep the lovely caramels and chocolate truffles off the linoleum. Once I got the nougats in line, I could reason with the strawberry and raspberry-cream filled ones, neither of them having proven themselves to be the mensa members in the world of sweets. Soon I would be inside that chocolate shop, and eating myself into a sugarized Jimi-Hendrix-I-think-I-see-God-no-wait -that-was-just-the-shadow -of-my-own -heifer-ass-on-the-wall oblivion.

In the morning, it would be kind of like that childhood story about the poor humble cobbler who comes to his shop to find all the shoes already made. Except for instead of shoes, when the chocolatiers came to their shop they would find one big metal tray after another, empty. And tongue marks on the front door.