On the way back into the city yesterday, I was involved in what I thought would be some sort of news story, but I haven't been able to find mention of it online yet, so I suppose I will be forced to do the reporting. The train ran into a pedestrian! It was between Bellport and Patchogue, and my unverified imagining of the events is that a very large woman, possessing a strong air of life spent in the company of trailers, was partying down by the tracks and wandered too close to the approaching locomotive. Soon far too many king's horses and men were swarming the scene, including firemen, paramedics, and police from at least three different townships and two photographers (which is another reason I find it odd that I can't find an article in Newsday or something about this). One of the firemen was wandering back and forth carrying a large ax, presumably in case the immensity of the victim made stuffing her into one of the ambulances impossible without some judicious trimming. I also got to see a bit of real world detective work when one of the cops carefully picked up a bottle of water that was sitting atop a flattened cardboard box next to the tracks, held it up and slowly turned it around while examining it closely from all angles, and then quickly twisted off the cap and took a swig of it. Having ascertained the contents he very carefully placed it back exactly where he had found it and moved on. After about an hour and a half a very, very important man seated next to me got on the horn to the MTA and started complaining loudly about the delay, saying that "these guys are just standing around here with nothing better to do, but the people on this train have jobs to get to and places to be and they're making us all sit here looking like a bunch of idiots!" I would think that if you actually had to get to work you wouldn't be on the 11:55am train, though I guess that I was supposed to be at work myself. But I'm what is colloquially known as a "goldbricking glorified secretary who wanders in whenever he pleases acting like he owns the goddamned place" so I'm not a very good example of how someone who really 'had to be at work' might behave. Anyhow, the accident did not appear to be fatal and we finally got moving again and reached the city by 4pm. In lieu of an article about that I will link to this article about the travails of East End ambulance drivers from the East Hampton Star, which covers some similarly compassionate behavior, as well as an article on chickens, apropos of nothing other than the excellence of the Star's writing. (I would warn the Herald of Everett take notice and stay vigilant, but they seem to be keeping on their toes with or without the cross-country competition, as you can see from the tale of the dog cookie.)