In Search of Chlamydia
The cement trough yawns below me, an abyss filled with streaming sewage hundreds of feet below. The smell is pungent and faintly urine-like as wastewater from streams and rivers mixes with household waste to create a haven for the bacterium that is my nemesis: Chlamydia.
“You know what’s in the sewage?” asks the beefy engineer at the Woodward Avenue water purification plant in Hamilton, a small city in Ontario once famous for its steel. These days, it is more known for its non-achievements: steel mill layoffs, Ti-Cats football fanatics who shout “Oskie-Wee-Wee! Oskie-Wa-Wa! Holy mackinaw! Tigers…ha! Ha! Ha!” even as their team repeatedly loses, and an underdeveloped downtown core with an overdeveloped pigeon problem.
But Hamilton is also a city of waterfalls and streams, rivers and harbors, all a natural home for Chlamydia. As, of course, is sewage.
“Corn,” the engineer answers himself seriously. “Corn doesn’t get digested. It passes through the intestine intact.”
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