The Rat Patrol

I see those little black boxes (that look like they’re made out of hard plastic) strewn about on sidewalks all over the city. And they make me think of cripples. There’s one outside of my doctor’s office building, one in the parking lot of the liquor store and several around a condo complex nearby. I don't know what they are but someone told me that they’re rat traps. That makes sense to me, given how many rats there are in Chicago, although I’ve never seen a rat anywhere near one of those boxes. Maybe their rat friends have warned them to stay away. And I don’t see how those rats get into those boxes anyway. They don’t appear to have entrances. They look like tool boxes. And I don’t know what happens to the rats once they go inside. Maybe there are little guillotines inside the boxes because the rats never come out. And that’s probably why seeing those boxes makes me think about cripples. Because I figure that the company that sells these boxes must employ a lot of cripples. Normally, that would be a good thing. But in this case, maybe not so much. Because Section 14c of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act allows companies to pay certain cripples less than the minimum wage. There is no legal limit to how little those cripples can be paid. And so, the company that sells those boxes has to hire a crew of people to empty all of the dead (and maybe even decapitated) rats out of them. They probably hire cripples to do that dirty work. They probably call them the Rat Patrol and for each dead (and maybe even decapitated) rat that they turn in at the end of their shift they pay them three cents or something. That encourages competition and makes those cripples get out there and hustle up those dead rats. And, most of all, they get to experience the dignity of work. (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH-nvFX30Mk2fJx9uI