Double Jeopardy

Tonight, both my life and my job may have been put in danger.

First, my life.

Since Katie is not feeling well I need to walk to work. The three minutes of sun, drizzle, breeze, or absolute darkness aren't so bad.

Unless there are coyotes.

Tonight I was taking my normal stroll, and up ahead of me on the path was, yes, a coyote. It was running, then it stopped, and stared straight in my direction as I was walking toward it. I am unsure of the likelihood that a coyote would attack a human in the suburbs, but I'd like to think it is high. Especially since I smelled like Mexican food, which coyotes love.

What could I do? I didn't want to try to walk toward it and hope it would ignore me, like I would to a goose. Nor did I want to walk away, for fear that the trip back into the overshadowed path would encourage it to try and eat me. So, I reached into the recesses of my past, and remembered the last experience I had with suburban coyotes.

That night, outside of my pastor's house, my friend Mary Beth (a native Arizonian) and I were outside and confronted by suburban coyotes, albeit at a distance. I freaked out, but not MB. She started stamping and clapping and yelling, "Ay ay ay ay!" (Read it more like a long "a" sound than a Mexican fiesta chant, which would likely have attracted the coyotes.) The wild beasts ran away, and we were safe.

So, I imitated my Arizonian amiga. I stamped my feet, and I clapped my hands. I didn't yell, though. I figured I'd save a little more gusto in case it started running at me and I needed to surprise it. And, you know what happened? It ran away. Instead of eating my face, it ran away. And I made it home safely.

Now, my job.

A dessert had been placed upon a tray, ready to be carried out to a table, when a small piece of said dessert fell off of the plate, and onto the tray. This small bite would obviously have been thrown away, so a coworker standing by eyed it, looked at me, and then eyed it again. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: "If you're gonna eat it, don't be sneaky about it. That justs looks suspicious. Just eat it."
Him: "You think so?"
"It's just gonna get thrown away. Whatever, man."

As he ate it, a manager saw him and totally called him out on it. Like, seriously.

Panic struck.

Later on, as I was leaving work, I told said manager the story, that it had fallen off the plate, and that I had peer pressured him into it. He wasn't just flippantly eating off of people's plates. In fact, he would never do such a thing. The response was that he could potentially have lost his job for that. I said it was probably more my peer pressure than him just eating food.

The response? It was something like, "Ok. Good night."

That did not sound promising.