Blog Love Omega Glee: Please Be Polite, The Coyote Is Listening (7 April 2012)

In all the comic books The Cleaveland Coyote has read over the years, they never include the part that being on a superhero patrol is boring. The Coyote crouches on the roof of an apartment building in the neighborhood, yawning and scanning below for any signs of trouble. It is the middle of the night so there's not many signs of anything. His face itches under his mask, so he scratches it. The mask is furry and was clumsily assembled using his grandmother's old sewing machine. It is supposed to look like the head of a coyote, complete with ears, but it kind of looks like a mullet that exploded. The rest of his costume is more refined. The Coyote bought a nice black wool suit at a thrift store and had it drycleaned. He found black garden gloves in the garage, and he bought combat boots at the military surplus store. He also wears a tie with a picture of a coyote howling at a full moon on it. OK, it is probably a picture of a wolf howling at the moon but he likes to think that it is just a big coyote. He could not find a tie at the thrift store with a coyote on it, so he settled for this one. Actually, The Coyote is unsure why ties are even worn nowadays since they invented buttons and zippers years ago, so ties are unneeded to actually you know "tie" something, but since it's traditional to wear a tie with a suit, he wears one in his uniform. He also has a standard black tie that he puts on when he changes back from his secret identity of The Cleaveland Coyote, Protector of Politeness into his alter ego of Donald Coyote. Or is Donald Coyote his secret identity? He can never keep that straight. Actually both identities are public, or will be when he actually catches a criminal, or flexes his muscles for manners as The Cleaveland Coyote, but no one should know that Donald Coyote and The Cleaveland Coyote are the same individual.

Hmm . . . maybe he should not have used his family name in his superhero name. He will have to think about that. For now though, he protects his identities from being linked by changing ties and taking the coyote mask off. He thought about taking to wearing glasses and using those to disguise himself, and at first that seemed like a super idea, but ultimately he decided that it seemed too ridiculous an idea to work. At times, the whole superhero idea seems ridiculous as well, but here he is in the middle of the night on the roof of an apartment building patrolling the neighborhood.

Or prowling. He broke in to the apartment building because it seemed the best candidate for providing an aerial view of the neighborhood. And, in any case, he hardly broke in. The doors were open. OK, technically he is trespassing, but Batman has to break some rules too occasionally. The Coyote wonders in fact if Batman ever has such problems on patrol, but then remembers Batman is rich and would probably fly his Batcopter around town if he needed an aerial view of things.

It is a little more challenging being a working class superhero.

For example, if the police found him in the apartment building with his Howling Backpack, where he contains all his tools such as a flashlight, a baton, and his lunch, they might charge him with carrying burglary tools, and not following the United States Department of Agriculture food pyramid since his lunch is basically beef jerky and candy bars.

But that is the risk a vigilante has to take. From up here however, The Coyote cannot hear anybody not being polite. Or being polite. He cannot hear much of any thing except the wind and some distant windchimes. Nor can he see greedy CEOs embezzling their companies, or politicians colluding to defraud taxpayers. He might be able to spot some street crime, but by the time he ran down the stairs to stop it, it would probably be too late, or he would have misunderstood what he was seeing from the roof.

The Coyote sighs.

It is not easy to be a superhero.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.