The young, diseased and poor

Welcome to Rent, the musical. And of course, the week has started with a bang proving yet again that some of the best stories are back stage.

There are only 4 of us working wardrobe for this show – vs. the 15 or so that worked Lion King – and our load-in this morning consisted of the four of us sitting around chatting, getting up to do laundry, chatting some more, doing a little more work and leaving by noon. We’ll be back for the show tonight but it promises to be a pretty easy week. It’s funny that I’m working this show now because in my last year of school we studied this musical and I didn’t like it. In fact I think I called the music “amateurish” in the discussion class and that was the last word I got in edgewise as the class erupted into an uproar. Something about this musical has elicited a hard core fan base – calling themselves “Rent-heads” - who follow the show around from city to city, squat on the sidewalks waiting for tickets in NYC and generally act like groupies. There were a couple of Rent-heads in my class and they were outraged at my description. In fact the teacher of that class, now my friend, still talks about the uproar. So suffice it to say, I hope I like the show more after working it…

The quote of the day, however, belongs to my friend Chris this morning who, when asked to iron yet another pair of pants, said “Everyone in this show is young, diseased and poor. Do you really think they iron their pants??” Ah, the magic of theatre. Even the poor and diseased get pressed pants.

But my story today has nothing to do with Rent. And I have to preface this story by saying that it’s disgusting and disturbing, so take that as a spoiler. If you don’t want to read about something horrifying, stop now and come back tomorrow when I’m actually talking about the show.

Are your loins properly girded up? Alright then, proceed.

So, our Department Head (DH) - she lives in town and we worked together on Lion King - shows up this morning and she looks horrible. Worn out, exhausted, glassy eyed etc. So I ask her what’s going on and without preface she says that for the past 4 days she’s been living in the middle of a crime scene, a’la CSI. Well, ok, I’m intrigued. Tell me more.

A week ago her daughter’s cat disappeared and they thought she had just run off. Now this DH (her house is all over the news right now but I’ll try and keep her name out of this blog) used to be an animal activist when she lived in San Francisco – the “chain yourself to a building and get hauled off to jail” sort of activist. She still does a lot of animal rescue work here in town working with various pet shelters and taking in strays until they find homes. She’s very much into animals and this cat has been their pet since her daughter was born. So, she and her daughter spent time putting up flyers and asking about their pet but couldn’t find her. Then last week one of their neighbors comes by to say that while out walking her dog she found part of their cat. A head with no body… There are coyotes around here and they prey on domestic pets so everyone figured that was what was happened until that same neighbor, the next night, found a cat in two halves and missing the legs. Well, now something is going on because coyotes will eat the whole thing or at least drag it away and this cat looked cut in half.

So the DH and her husband call 911 and the cops refuse to come out because it’s an animal. They call Animal Control who say they’ll come out but then they don’t. For three days they call every day and no one responds. So the DH and her husband start scouting around the neighborhood and behind a vacant house near them they find a pile of cat parts, different cats all in pieces. And what looks like a dog leash with bones attached to it and the end chewed off like something escaped. So she gets a bucket and plastic bag and starts collecting all the cat parts (um, ick…) while her husband calls someone he knows who knows someone else who knows an animal forensic specialist here in Tucson (A. there is such a thing? And B. in Tucson??).

The specialist responds immediately takes one look at the scene and calls Animal Control and they respond immediately, and then someone calls a local news station who responds immediately and suddenly the cops are also there with crime scene tape and an attitude. They actually yelled at the DH for “disturbing the crime scene” after they had ignored her for three days (and you know they were probably on the set of the movie Snappers. I saw several cops there, sitting around doing “traffic control” to keep the noise down during shooting…).

The forensic specialist looked at some of the bones and the DH asked if it was coyotes. He looked at her and said, “Well when coyotes eat something they hold it down with their paws and drag their teeth along the length of the bone to strip off the meat.” He shows her the bone and says, “These teeth marks are going around the bone, the way a human eats a chicken leg…” Yes, that’s correct. We have someone human out here - or someone who once was human - eating cats. And now, of course, everyone’s all concerned because almost every serial killer has started with animals before moving on to humans.

Can I repeat? Someone in Tucson is mutilating and eating neighborhood cats. I doubt I’m going to hear a story all week that tops this one. Except for the guy I met who’s telling me a story about how he was a sole survivor of a triple murder suicide here in Tucson a few years ago.

So murder, mayhem and disease down here in the Old Pueblo. And what are you doing with your afternoon?