Habitat: the lower third of the refrigerator, behind a humidity dial most owners have never turned, in a drawer sized with confidence and stocked with regret. Here dwell the specimens that were purchased with intention, a bunch of cilantro, three carrots, half a head of something green, and then quietly reclassified, over the course of eleven to fourteen days, from produce into evidence. The crisper drawer does not judge this transition. It merely provides the climate for it, a controlled slide toward liquefaction conducted at a temperature specifically engineered to slow rot without ever quite arresting it.
Field observation notes two populations within the drawer: the optimists, recently added and still crisp, destined for a salad that may or may not materialize, and the veterans, soft and sweating faintly against the plastic, past identification without close inspection. The two rarely interact, separated by a divider whose slats are, statistically, the most bacteria-dense surface in the average home, a fact the drawer keeps to itself. Its humidity setting has never been adjusted by anyone who owns the refrigerator, only by whoever assembled it at the factory, and what, precisely, 'vegetable' versus 'crisp' refers to on that dial has never once been consulted before use.