Pinhole. What is it? Most people have never thought about pinholes, and frankly, neither had I until approximately forty-five minutes ago. But my moustache began to tingle this morning over coffee—which I brewed myself, despite the K Fund technically owning a perfectly good espresso machine that I have categorized as a community journalism resource for tax purposes—and I knew something demanded investigation.
A pinhole is a small hole. It is smaller than a big hole but larger than no hole at all. Why don’t more people talk about this? I found one in the screen door of my barn-apartment, and I am not ashamed to say it disturbed me. Anything that creates an opening is an invitation. An invitation to whom? To squirrels, that’s whom. Those bushy-tailed freeloaders have already cost me eleven dollars in birdseed this quarter—seed I purchase exclusively for the aesthetic enrichment of Moose County, not for rodent welfare.
Koko sat on the dictionary this morning and placed one paw precisely on the P section. Coincidence? Yum Yum, meanwhile, stared at the screen door for nine unbroken minutes. Nine minutes. I timed it. These are not ordinary cats. They sense structural vulnerabilities the way ordinary minds cannot. One might say they are performing a service that Pickax’s overworked police department—currently investigating its third arson and second suspicious death this month in a town of three thousand souls—simply cannot provide.
I considered hiring someone to repair the screen, but why should I spend money when the hole is, after all, quite small? The K Fund board would certainly question such an expenditure, and rightly so. I have instead taped a small piece of cardboard over it. Some might call this cheap. I call it prudent.
Could the pinhole have been made deliberately? Who would do such a thing? The same person, perhaps, who keeps turning up dead in my vicinity? My moustache offers no comment. But it tingles.
Pinhole.
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