It's the little things
Isn't it?
I mean, a bear will get your attention, particularly if you're hiking alone on some subarctic trail and the animal in question is a grizzly,1 but how often does that happen? Fleas on the other hand? They are never singular and they can easily be maddening.
(We'll get to the story part shortly. The following is true. My then-partner and I used to travel for months at a time. Upon returning to our abode with our cats and dog we didn't want to expose them to the resident flea population that we knew would have hatched and lain in wait for the next succulent mammal to wander in. Nor, as organicists, would we bomb the place with pesticides. So we'd leave the cats and dog in the camper, take off our shoes and socks and pants, and wade into the fray. Fleas would mob us. With our legs peppered with little hungries we'd jump in the bathtub and wash them down. Again and again until the coast was clear. It was kind of satisfying. We spared our pets and ourselves a great deal of looming future misery.)
Or arctic, if you're out on the ice and an immense white bruin pops into view. (Again, that's a rarity, given that most of us prefer moderate warmth to blistering cold.) But fleas? They have it way over polar bears. I mean, really. Getting eaten by a big alabaster beast would happen pretty darn fast. Getting eaten by fleas? Interminable. (Strickland Gilliland® gained fame if not fortune by composing what is generally deemed to be the shortest English language poem ever written: “Adam had 'em.” If true—and how could we know—one wonders if God made the fleas post-apple as part of the punishment regimen. Exile would havebeen at least a little more pleasant in their absence.) Having a polar bear attached to your ankle would be a one-and-done. Fleas will go on all summer. Better dead than … well, I don't have a rhyme here … “than being progressively lunched on in itchy despair.”
But we have let the fleas divert our attention from the much more important “little things.” (As they will.)
There are, in point of fact, things much smaller than fleas which can and do trouble a weary mind. (To rather invert Harmie Smith®'s classic, “Weary trouble on my mind.” But we do inversions here at will. We are practically linguistic contortionists!)
So, no—not doing flea here. We're going hypodermic deep.
Wilinda Bates is utterly fascinated by one of the simplest and in its way “smallest” concepts in the magical field of pure mathematics, though its implications are huge.2 [I bet you already want to get to know her better even though you've only just met!]
Let's see. She lives alone and lives in her head a lot, so her housekeeping is pretty slack. “Cluttered,” applies, as does “dusty.” But within that frame she's also surprisingly organized. The stacks of reading material are as orderly as books on a library shelf, Dewey decimaled as the dickens.3 Magazines are sequential by volume, issue and date. In the midst of a conversation she can whip out an article from three years back that addresses precisely your immediate concern. Or hand you a book on the topic.
She's slim.
Her favorite color is Cadet Blue.
Food is a minor concern and her diet is pretty monotonous. I guess she's an “eat to live” vs. “live to eat” sort.
What else?
Um, she's 43. (Literally in her “prime!”) (Or one of them.)
And, of course, like all of my favorite make-believe people, she has a cat. Her name is Pomonella.4
I know you are waiting with bated breath to learn more! (Or is that “baited?” I'm never quite clear on that. Does the term derive from “abated?” Or is it the sense of hoping to catch something? See worm reference on page 51.5 ) [In the print version.]
She's been married three times!6
She was born on August 13th! Her weddings were on January 17th, May 27th and September 29th! In 2003, 2011 and 2017,respectively!
Wilinda's ruling passion is for prime numbers, as by now you've surely guessed. As Alec Wilkinson® noted in A Divine Language,7 “Prime numbers are where imaginary mathematics begins.” Imaginary mathematics! Ooooh!
Her favorites are mostly tetradic primes, that is, those numbers that are prime backward and in a mirror: 11, 101, 1881881 and the like. Sometimes she gets out a pencil and paper and spends hours dividing primes by themselves which she finds relaxing.
1881881/1881881=1, 3/3=1, and etc.
[I'm obviously kidding here. Wilinda would hardly find such amusing. What she actually does is this: she divides primes by primes. Say, 1881881/3. Try it! No, not on your phone or laptop calculator. On paper. Or 1881881/7. Gosh.]
Her least favorite divisor is 2. “It doesn't seem right,” she told me. “An even number shouldn't be allowed in. Division of primes by 2 always ends in point 5.”
[I'm sure you agree—but that's not where we're going with this exciting tale.]
She is independently wealthy, one reason why she's never fallen into the economic matrimony trap that often keeps women in marriages they'd rather exit—women's wages being what they generally are.
How so? (I hear you thinking.)
She actually invented a better mouse trap!
Now you're probably wondering where you can obtain the same.
You can't.
:-( ← Sad face.8
Wherefrom, then, her great wealth? (I hear you thinking.) (Keep it up. You're making this story work!)
In the old days an inventor of a handy gizmo would obtain a patent, set up shop, perhaps with an angel investor, and start production. Think fingernail clipper.
I'm pretty sure we can all agree that a modern style finger-nail clipper is right up there with mouse traps and flea combs when it comes to making life livable: i.e. it is no “little thing.” Up until 1875 when Valentine Fogerty® obtained a U.S. patent for something like the nail trimmers we use today, and Hungarian inventor David Gestetner® did the same in the United Kingdom, people used knives or their teeth. (Lacking a knife you'd have to get someone else to bite your toenails, unless you were a contortionist, of course.) Production and sales started directly.
But that was then and this is now.
Under late-stage capitalism a patent is often purchased by a corporation with no intent whatever of actually making the gizmo, rather the goal is to prevent anyone else from making it. In Wilinda's case there was a bidding war with the winner eventually proffering $3 million.
You see, her design would cost more to manufacture than the old-fashioned spring bar on a block of wood. Market analysts believed the profit margin would be narrow, but feared its availability could disrupt the market. After all, many people think of dead mice as icky and throw the used traps away with rodent attached rather than doing the sane thing—to drop the mouse in the compost pile and reuse the unit. Hers could be cleanly and handily emptied, hence reused. Not a good business plan.
[That, or the things would work so well that house mice would vanish, completely collapsing the lucrative industry.]
Wilinda is a stickler, however, and demanded payment of $61,209 per month for 49.9 months. [She has her standards!]
As for her home rodent control issues, that's where Pomonella comes in. She was a heck of a mouser in life and is the same in her fictional role. Back in the days when Susan and I were wending our peripatetic way around the continent, Po would catch mice at campsites, and naturally enough, around the home place, where mice were as likely to move in during our absence as fleas.9The most amazing thing about Po, however—in my view, apart from living to age 23 [23!]—was this.
Living in the woods in those high and far off times, our felines were indoor/outdoor.10 Po was particularly fond of squirrels. She'd eat them whole, except for their tails and one odd internal organ. (Spleen maybe?)
I thought you'd want to know.
Meanwhile, Wilinda is trying to find the next prime. No small thing.
***
NOTE PER FOOTNOTES: Substack starts off with new numbering each time I post a story. But Footnotes in the original book are continuous and often refer back to previous super important stuff, So original Footnote #s are included below in [#]s.
1 [111] This may be a good moment to quote Annie Dillard®—there being many good moments to quote Dillard, of course. “I have read that in the unlikely event that you are caught in a stare-down with a grizzly bear, the best thing to do is talk to him softly and pleasantly. Your voice is supposed to have a soothing effect.” Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p. 202. I think that sounds about right. You go first.
2 [112] Talk about deep!
3 [113] Dickens®, of course, has long been Deweyed. Though not his fiction.
4 [114] Like all of the cats in my fiction Po was a real companion of mine, on loan to Wilinda for purposes yet to be revealed. (Po lived to age 23!)
5 [115] Also, we here note, prime, as is this footnote.
6 [116] Another prime! Also, three times divorced.
7 [117] Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022. (Three names. Are we surprised?)
8 [118] This puts me in the “graphic novel” category for the Book Award®.
9 [119] And were likely the, or at least “a” source of the fleas. Note this footnote is not prime. (7 x 17) Nor is the next. Sigh.
10 [120] Quiet dirt road, virtually no traffic. Since I moved into the city two decades ago my buddies are strictly indoor.