Driving to town the DJ is talking about toxoplasma gondii on the radio.

Everything the DJ says, Shrimp Box says first.  Except, the DJ is getting it all wrong.

Mice, rats, Shrimp Box is yelling.

Often, while driving, you see people yelling in their cars and wonder what they’re so excited about.

Parasites! is the answer.

Their life cycle something something, they move from rats to cats and back. They mate in the cats’ intestines or something, he says.

According to the DJ, toxoplasma gondii is why people are extroverts.

Shrimp Box doesn’t know about that.

He’s oversimplifying, he says to his daughter.

Also, I said toxoplasma gondii is my favorite parasite, but it might be cordyceps, when I think about it.

Also, 22% of Americans are infected? So what? There’s a town in the Czech Republic with a way higher rate of infection, he says.

Yells.

And it doesn’t just make you extroverted. It has different effects on men and women. Men it makes paranoid or something. Women warm and social or something. But it makes everyone take risks. Just look at the rats and mice, they run up to cats and stuff and get eaten. They examined motorcyclists who’d been in accidents, and they had a higher rate of infection than the general population.

I had four cups of coffee this morning, how many did you have, he yells.

This is called getting the day off to a good start, he yells.

And nary a garbage truck nor student driver was seen that morning as Shrimp Box made his appointed rounds, and at work someone gave him a snack made of beans that had been exposed to gamma radiation or something.

What do we say to death? yells Shrimp Box. We say, not today!