1 Crazy Woman + 1 Frozen Rat = 1 Scary Walk Home

The other day I had an interesting walk home from the bus stop. On my way, I walk past a homeless hangout. It's not a shelter, but a place where they can go during the day for food & conversation, etc. There's also a medical van that comes by. Normally, there's just a bunch of guys hanging out on the benches in front. When I walked past, though, there was a fight. (I don't know why I keep witnessing fights this week). A woman had a man's arm twisted behind his back. He was yelling at her to stop. She was screaming at him in Spanish.

I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do, and I was getting a little nervous about approaching the fight area. Other people in the general vicinity seemed to be ignoring it. What do you do here? Call 911? Ignore it? I decided to ignore it, and walk as far away from it as I could. I'm still not sure if I made the right decision. As I approached the fight, she let go of his arm, and started walking down the street, getting up into people's faces and yelling at them. She was clearly drunk. I thought about ducking into the corner bodega until she went away, but decided to just take my chances and walk past her, which was successful. I could hear her yelling all the way at my house, which is 3 blocks away!

My building has a courtyard in front, which normally is very cute and makes the building look kind of college campus-y. When I walked into the courtyard, I noticed something kind of lumpy on the ground. I looked more closely, and realized it was a frozen rat! DISGUSTING. I walked away as quickly as I could, but I still can't get the picture of the frozen rat out of my head. Welcome to America's Ratiest City, Washington, DC.