Let me see. Where was I? Let me check yesterday’s blog …
Ah, yes. So there I was: four hours to go till sunset, four and a half hours till full dark, nothing to do in the meantime but to play round after round of lightning-and-thunder with the mozzies.
It’s early yet for mosquitoes. The days are warm, but temperatures are still hitting the mid-forties overnight. These mozzies buzzed around as if the buffet hadn’t started yet, but they wanted to see the offerings. More often than not, I brought on the thunder before they’d so much as landed. Still, one of them scored a lightning strike every now and again.
In between mozzie attacks, I composed an unprintable limerick in my head — but since it was unprintable, I couldn’t write it down. So I composed the following poem instead:
There's a huffy galumph In the Arc de Triomphe And he mutters a constant harrumph!
I listened to the acorns falling from the trees. It’s the wrong season for acorns to be falling, but I could plainly see half a dozen squirrels loitering about, so I didn’t give the matter a whole lot of thought.
Certainly not as much as I should have, seeing as how none of the squirrels had come anywhere near the ancient oak tree that I’d camped under. Later, it occurred to me the tree I’d camped under seemed to be the source of most of the acorns.
I wrote a blog post. It was a boring one, even by my standards. Let’s face it, travel blogging is not what I do best. I’m more of an off-the-map, here-there-be-monsters kind of writer. I texted a friend, saying I was considering adding a dragon to the blog. Or a unicorn. Anything to make the tale more lively.
The sun went down. The night crept in. I bade goodnight to the mozzies and shut down my phone.
Something began inching its way down the trunk of the oak tree.
I couldn’t see it, though I could hear it moving around high overhead. Slowly it descended, keeping itself on the other side of the trunk. Claws dug in. Bits of bark fell away. Why in the name of Blue did I shut off my phone?
It’s an old phone. Boots up like a sloth in the morning. For that matter, it resembles a sloth all day long.
The thing crept closer. Why was it taking so long? The tree wasn’t that tall.
Maybe the thing was a sloth. But I didn’t think so. I reckoned it must be a possum. Only … only it didn’t move like a possum. The closer it got, the more I got the impression it was trying to sneak up on me.
My phone won the race. Barely. I brought up the camera and flicked over to video just before it touched ground. Then I sort of leaned ’round the base of the tree.
Bear!
No, wait. Too small.
Bear cub! Oh, no no no! Blue save me, where’s its mama!?! Another acorn dropped.
No, wait. That’s not fur, that’s … quills?
Porcubear! A big one — biggest I’ve ever seen!
Porcubears aren’t exactly aggressive; they’re just pushy. They’ll wander into your camp and start rooting through your things, knowing there isn’t much you can do about it on account of the porcupine quills. I mean, what are you gonna do, give it a kick? Wouldn’t the folks down at the Teva sandal company love to get ahold of that video!
They’re pretty strong, porcubears are. They could maul a person pretty badly if they wanted to, but mostly they’ll just nudge you aside. You never want to get in a queue with a porcubear.
I wished my friend Vern had come along on this trip. He always knows what to do in Wild Side encounters. But Vern wasn’t there, so I tried to chase her away with a stick. She practically laughed in my face. Nobody wins who gets in a poking contest with a porcubear. Then I tried standing up. I reckoned I’d show her how much bigger I was. Trouble is, I still had my sleeping bag wrapped around me. I probably looked like the world’s biggest grub. The porcubear was intrigued.
Then I said some things about her mother.
I probably shouldn’t have done that. I mean, sometimes out here in the Wild, it’s survival of the fittest: kill or be killed. But some things are unforgivably rude even in the most brutal environments, and plus, you just never know what a porcubear’s home life is like. For just a moment, it looked as if the critter’s response could go either way, and my fate hung in the balance. If my life had ended right there, it probably would have been no less than what I deserved.
But the porcubear just gave me a sad look and turned away. Presently she wandered off, leaving me to contemplate the horrible person I’d become.
No sooner was she out of range when a loud crack sounded somewhere overhead, and a widowmaker hit the ground — missing me by only a couple of feet. I stared at the heavy branch, then stared up to where the top of the oak tree disappeared in the darkness.
“Sorry!” I said out loud.
Even now, I still don’t know which family member was left up there, and whether my apology was sufficient, or they just ran out of ammo. But I didn’t get much sleep the rest of the night.
I think I could hear the mozzies singing “Thunder!”
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