Note:  A preview from my upcoming autobiography, Life’s Too Short to Smoke Cheap Cigars (Or to Drink Cheap Whiskey.)

Skunks

Walking a Trapline With Your Pals the Other Day…

Trapping was a fine old pastime for me and my friends back in the day.  Through most of my teenage years proceeds from my winter trapline kept me in pizzas as well as shotgun and .22 shells most of the year, although around the age of seventeen I gave up the trapline in favor of more consistent and better-paying work on local farms and in town.  I do still have all my traps and some day may take the hobby up again, but for now, my traps are idle.

My old buddy Jon, on the other hand, went to great lengths to keep his trapline active until he was in his twenties, when a new wife objected to his having to run the line twice a day all winter.  But when we were in high school, he still ran the line, and his trapline was the location for many a city kids’ outdoor education.  On one Sunday when we were seniors in high school, it was Jon’s cousin Albert’s turn.

Albert had already been introduced to late-night cat fishing on the Mississippi.  For our crew of outdoor bums and misfits, this mainly involved running a trotline between two backwater islands, retiring to one island, and sitting around a bonfire drinking beer all night.  (This was back in the days when the drinking age was 18, and many a high school senior was legal.)  He had earned our respect by his sporting acceptance of his introduction to that inveterate outdoor tradition, the Snipe Hunt.

But on this sub-zero January Sunday at 6AM, the three of us – Jon, Albert, and I – were out running Jon’s trapline on the upper reaches of Waterloo Creek.

The morning was frigid, but as veterans of the Northeast Iowa winters, we were prepared for it; and the bag already contained two raccoons, a mink, and four squirrels brought down by the inevitable .22 rifles we carried everywhere.  We were walking towards a fox set Jon had set in a fencerow, talking about crows and laughing over the occasional crude joke, when Jon first spotted the skunk.

Mephitis mephitis, the Striped Skunk

“Hey, guys, I think I’ve got a skunk in my fox set” Jon warned.

I peered ahead, made out black fur against the snow, and the telltale white V was moving.  “Yep, you do,” I replied, “And it’s still kicking.”

“Know what my Dad told me about skunks?”  Albert asked.  Jon and I both gave him a blank look.  “He says if you grab ‘em by the tail and hoist ‘em up fast, they can’t spray you.  Ever try it?”

I immediately saw the opportunity to test that assertion.  “I never heard that, but heck, Jon, if Albert’s Dad said it’ll work, I think you ought to try it.”  Jon gave me a baleful look – Albert’s Dad ran a hardware store in town and wasn’t exactly renowned for his vast knowledge of wildlife habits.  “What’s more, you’ve got the perfect opportunity right there.  That skunk’s still alive, and he’s facing the other way – you can probably sneak right up on him down the fencerow.  And we can put him in your trapline sack.  Here, I’ll put your ‘coons and the mink in my coat.”

“I think you ought to do it, man.”  Jon replied.  “You’re a lot better at sneakin’ than I am.”

“Can’t do it, sorry” I answered with a grin.  “New coat.  If I get skunk on it, it’ll be my hide.”  That was a good dodge – I made a mental note to always wear a piece of recently purchased clothing when on Jon’s trapline.

“Go on and try it, Jon.”  Albert persisted.  “Otherwise we’ll never know if it works.”

Jon was hesitant, but on some instinctual level he knew his reputation was at stake, such as it was.  With a frown, he handed me his .22.

“Hold this.  I don’t want skunk all over it, too.”  I guess he wasn’t too optimistic.

To give credit where credit was due, few people were as sneaky as Jon, and on a skunk hunt, his sneakery was unsurpassed.  He drifted down the fencerow like a puff of smoke on the breeze, placing each foot with great care, freezing every time the skunk lifted its head.  He worked his way right up behind the skunk, and in no time, he was impossibly close, the skunk still oblivious; and then Jon’s gloved hand flashed out, grabbing the skunk’s tail and yanking it skywards.

Wonder of wonders!  It worked!

The skunk dangled, popping its teeth and growling.  A faint drift of odor escaped, but no more.  “Get over here!” Jon shouted, “And bring that sack!  I don’t believe this works!”  We ran to his side, hooting with praise for our hero of the moment, and Jon grinned broadly in triumph.  We removed the #2 fox trap from the skunk’s front leg – there was nothing but a little bruising on the skunk.  And then, into the sack he went.

Amazingly, the skunk settled down in the sack, facing his predicament with a certain philosophical air.  After we finished the morning’s run, we took the skunk to Jon’s parent’s place.  Jon had an old abandoned rabbit hutch, and the skunk went into it.  A pan of water, a little dog food, and the hutch was hidden in the back of the Hooper’s machine shed.  After a day or two he became quite reasonable, only threatening for a moment with his upraised tail when Jon came in with more dog food.

But a captive skunk, weaponry intact, was too good an asset to go unused.  In those days, “de-scented” skunks had a certain popularity as pets and could be quite tame and gentle if raised from kits.  Our skunk, though, was an independent, tough old male, and all his natural defenses were in place – which, after a few days, began to tell on the back end of the machine shed.  Jon knew that only a matter of days remained before the skunk was discovered.  We had to come up with something good, and fast.

The Plan

It came to us one day at school, as Jon, Albert and I were hanging out in the parking lot behind the school building.

“You guys going to the dance this Saturday?”  Albert asked.  Jon and I responded with amused snorts – we weren’t the kind of guys who went to school dances.  “Well, I’m not.” Albert continued.  “I got no date, and I don’t care anyway.  Nothing there but bad disco music and the school gym full of all the “popular” kids talking about how great they are.”

Jon’s expression changed, suddenly; I could almost see the light bulb go off, right over his head.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”  I asked him.

Jon grinned back at me.  “You bet I am!  You think we can do it?”

“I think so.” I answered, feeling the beginnings of a plan.  “You know what, Albert?  You’re going to the dance after all.  You don’t need a date.  It’ll be worth it.”

Albert looked skeptical, but I won him over with the immortal words that would have immediately spelled GREAT DANGER to anyone who knew Jon and I a little better.  “Trust me!”  I assured him.

He really should have known better.

The night of the big dance, Jon and I saw to it that Albert was all fitted out – shiny blue disco shirt, gold chain, white pants, white shoes.  “How do I look?”  Albert asked.

Jon and I looked at each other, both of us clad as usual in worn jeans, engineer boots, black t-shirts and denim jackets.  “Uh, you look great, Al, no kidding” we assured him.  “You’ll be a chick magnet.  No fooling,” Jon added.

“Now,” I reminded Albert, “Remember – at exactly ten-thirty, you’ve got to go around and open the back door next to the bleachers.”

“I don’t know about this, guys.  Are you sure this is a good idea?”  Albert’s second thoughts threatened to ruin our whole evening, so Jon and I jumped on it hard.  “No, it’ll be great!  Trust us!”

Albert looked skeptical.  He wasn’t a complete fool.  Still, he went off to the dance, ticket in hand, doubts about his sanity in mind.

The Execution

Ten-thirty eventually rolled around.  Jon and I were waiting silently outside the back door to the gym, using the dumpster for cover.  In Jon’s hand was the original trapline sack, once again containing the skunk.  Right on time, the door opened, and Albert strolled out.

“Look, guys, I don’t think…” Albert let out a “YOWP” as I grabbed his arm, pulled him out of the way, and caught the door before it could swing shut.  Jon, reacting with a speed rarely seen in him at any time, reached in the sack and grabbed the skunk’s tail.  The skunk came out of the bag enraged and was immediately tossed in through the open door.  I slammed the door home, hearing the latch click into place.

“Oh, boy!”  Jon exulted.  “This oughtta be good!”

For a long moment, nothing happened.  We heard the faint strains of the Bee Gees stop suddenly.  There was silence, a moment of silence, but only that brief moment.

Then, as the saying goes, all Hell broke loose.

“SKUNK!” came the shout, form a dozen or more teenage throats at once.  The sound of pounding feet roared inside the gymnasium, all headed for the front door on the opposite side of the building.

“Suppose we better get the hell outta here, huh?” Jon noted, and we all thought that a wise idea, so we legged it on away form the door and up to the shelter of a row of shrubs on the edge of the school property.  From there we were treated to a rare live-action re-enactment of a Pepe LePew cartoon.

From what we were able to find out later, Monsieur Skunk hit the floor in the gymnasium in a state of confusion.  That didn’t last long – his confusion turned to rage, possibly at being subjected to bright lights, loud disco music, and around fifty teenagers dancing to the questionable talents of the Bee Gees.  (I can’t blame him for being enraged at the disco music, myself.)  Being a skunk, he reacted as skunks do.  In fact, he reacted with great abandon, casting all restraint to the winds and firing wildly in all directions; no skunk had ever found himself faced with a more target-rich environment.  His reaction was so profligate, in fact, that the entire gymnasium had to be repainted and the wood floor re-varnished.  The school’s janitor resigned in protest; contract workers had to be imported from Waterloo and lavishly paid to restore the gym to some semblance of usability, although the odor lingered for months, maybe years; in fact I would not be surprised if one could still detect it today.

But back then:  as we watched from the safety of the bushes, the doors were thrown open and a flood of teenagers, teachers, and chaperons flooded out of the building and onto the snow-covered lawn.  Gagging, screeching, and retching, the flood of bodies continued for several seconds.

We observed several notable performances.  One such was particularly satisfying.  My old girlfriend, Rhonda Walters, staggered onto the lawn clutching the arm of her latest, one William Jeffries.  Master Jeffries came from a family with money, and so was enthusiastically approved by Rhonda’s father as being a much better companion than a certain longhaired woods bum.  So, it was with a certain vengeful glee that I watched Will turn to Rhonda, adopt a thoughtful expression, and then suddenly throw up on Rhonda’s white strapless dress.

Nasty dousings in skunk spray have been known to have that effect.

Being vomited upon tends to exacerbate the effect.  Rhonda threw up in return, right onto Will’s shiny red shirt.

Jon nudged me in the ribs, grinning.  “You see that?  Watch ‘em all go now.”

All around the unhappy couple, teenagers looked upon the spectacle and reacted in kind.  Even the kids who hadn’t been hit directly were caught up in the wave; when everyone around you is discharging their latest meal into the snow, it becomes difficult to keep from following suit.  The sounds of retching reached us in our hideout.  We did our best to keep from laughing, but the crowd below us wouldn’t have heard a 747 revving its engines in our hedgerow hideout.  The school lawn was littered with bent, retching teenagers.

Several started scrubbing themselves frantically with snow; the temperature being right around ten degrees, the snow didn’t have much effect.  Several others abandoned the scene to race for cars and pickups, presumably in search of large cans of tomato juice.  A few who lived nearby just plain ran.

The back door stood open now, where several people had crashed out. The skunk, his anger discharged in spectacular fashion, strolled casually out and made his way into the nearby woods.

Then, through the chaos, came the imposing figure of Mr. Dean, the vice principal.  Seemingly immune to both the skunk stench and the display of serial vomiting, Mr. Dean strode through the spectacle like an avenging angel, shouting, “They’re near that back door someplace!”  Pointing to three of the larger teen boys still on their feet, he ordered, “You, you and you!  Come with me!”  With uncanny instinct, he headed for our row of shrubs.

“Time to go!”  Jon and Albert were of a similar mind, and we slipped quietly down the slope of the hill to our rear.  With all the skill gained in a lifetime of stalking sharp-eyed squirrels and wary, wily deer, we evaded our pursuers and arrived back at Jon’s van an hour later.

The best part of the entire exercise was our satisfaction in having completely one-upped the previous year’s senior class, who had only managed to turn loose a half-grown feeder pig into the same dance.

The Aftermath

It’s fortunate that a certain burden of proof is required, even for school systems that suspect a certain pair of young miscreants in the commission of a heinous act.  It was widely known that Jon ran a trapline, and skunks will get caught in traps; it was widely known that the two of us had what were at best twisted senses of humor.  It wasn’t hard to put two and two together, but the only witness that could place us at the scene – Albert – was likewise incriminated, and there’s no Fifth Amendment in detention proceedings.  Albert kept his mouth shut.  Reprisals from our classmates were limited to a few hallway scuffles; for good or bad, we were a pair of big, tough country kids, and that discouraged physical confrontations.  Mr. Dean insisted that he’d get even with the culprits if it took him the rest of his life.  At this distance in time, forty years later, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he’s still looking for evidence of our guilt.

And so, eventually, the whole thing blew over, at least until the following winter, when Jon managed to capture a badger.  But that’s another story.

Note:  A preview from my upcoming autobiography, Life’s Too Short to Smoke Cheap Cigars (Or to Drink Cheap Whiskey.)

Bull!

Most folks these days don’t think about cattle much.  Our increasingly urbanized populace knows, vaguely, that beef and dairy products come from cattle.  They may have a half-way decent mental image of what most cattle look like – big, boxy critters, basically a perambulating digestive system with beef mounted around the periphery, a head on one end and a big bag for producing milk and cheeses on the other.  There are other things that go on at the end across from the head, things which are best not discussed in polite company.  That will not, of course, prevent me from discussing them here.

But what these urban and suburban dwellers don’t understand is the bovine species’ largely unsuspected and malicious intelligence, nor how quickly they can turn that malice into action.  But when I was a young fellow, back in Allamakee County, in the heart of northeast Iowa’s dairy country, we understood it all too well.

As for the city-dweller’s misconceptions of the nature of cows, this is something I learned from the first good friend I ever had who hailed from a big city – something that had to wait until I joined the Army.

Fort Dix, New Jersey – sometime in the early Eighties

It was a hot, sweaty, humid day at Fort Dix, New Jersey – the exact wrong sort of day to be suffering through an Army Basic Training field exercise.

Not that there is a right sort of day to be suffering through an Army Basic Training field exercise.

At the end of a “lane” that featured lots of pyrotechnics and tear gas, we were given five minutes to rest and recover before the next bit of training.  The moment the Drill Sergeant yelled “Fall out,” I staggered to a tree and crashed to the ground under the shading branches.

My buddy, a skinny city kid from Philadelphia, dropped down to the sandy ground beside me, groaning.  “I think I cracked a rib,” he complained.  “Damn grenade simulator went off right behind me.  Knocked me right over.  Think I hit a rock when I went down.”  He rubbed his ribs.  “Man, imagine if this was real.  I mean, real people shooting real shit at us.  Can you imagine that?  Scare the crap out of me, I tell you that.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied, with big-tough-country-kid nonchalance.  “I’ve faced stuff more frightening that bullets and grenades.”

“The hell you say,” my buddy said.  “What’s scarier than bullets and grenades?”

“Cows.”

Back in Allamakee County

The Old Man had raised Black Angus cattle for many years but had mostly foregone farming by the time I was old enough to wander around much on my own.  Black Angus cattle are compact, even-tempered beasts, but are still big enough and unpredictable enough to cause problems, but all in all, Dad didn’t have too much trouble with them.

Later, though, his timbered acreage in Allamakee County was surrounded by dairy farms, the favored breed for which in those days were Holsteins – big cattle, heavy, sometimes bad-tempered.  Most of my friends’ families were involved in the dairy business to some extent or another, and the neighbor’s cattle had the uncanny ability to break fences and would frequently wander onto our property, at which point it became my job to run them off.

I once broached the subject of using my .30-30 to run them instead into the big freezer in the workshop but was rebuffed with a loud roar.

Instead, I experimented with a few other means of chasing errant bovines off the Clark property.  One of my early efforts involved an old fiberglass recurve bow and blunt arrows, which I bounced off bovine rib cages and hindquarters.  This had less than positive results, either merely annoying the cattle or angering them.  After spending half an hour about twenty feet up a big box-elder tree one afternoon with four or five angry cows milling about beneath, I gave up on the archery solution.

We finally settled on light skeet loads of #9 shot from a 12 gauge, delivered from about 20-30 yards.  The light shot warmed the cows’ hindquarters without penetrating the skin, and that usually moved the cows along – except for the odd instance that saw the Old Man or myself running around the flat ground across the creek with a few cows in pursuit.

Holsteins were cows to watch out for.  But there was one local bovine, not a cow as such but most emphatically a bull, the very thought of whom struck terror into the hearts of all the local kids.

A Local Legend

This huge Holstein bull lived on one of the farms belonging to the expansive Duffy clan.  Unfortunately, the farm in question lay in a pleasant little valley through which ran the pleasant little waterway of Waterloo Creek, in which swam a pleasant little population of pleasant little trout.  The bull maintained a constant vigil of what he thought of as his personal stretch of Waterloo Creek.  His zeal in pursuing trespassers made him a constant problem for those of us with a passion for fishing; his evil disposition, vast size and uncanny deviousness made him dangerous for even his owner.  The bull was a killer, and only the board full of blue ribbons and large sums he earned his owner in stud fees had preserved him to this point.  His back was as broad as a ’69 Cadillac, his head larger than a twenty-gallon washtub topped by needle-tipped horns.  His eyes glittered red and angry, full of hate for any moving object that was not one of his cows.

This bull was notorious enough, in fact, that all the local folk had unanimously given him a name.  He had some long, fancy pedigree name that nobody knew or cared about; instead, he was known locally as The Antichrist.

My first encounter with The Antichrist occurred when I was about fifteen.  I was mooching around in the Waterloo Creek valley looking over some favored fishing spots.  There was a beautiful big pool in a pasture on the back reaches of one of the Duffy farms that always held fat brown trout.

I was just climbing over the fence when I heard a strangled bellow.  I froze in place, the top strand of barbed wire uncomfortably close to some delicate real estate and looked over to the trees along the creek.

There stood The Antichrist, a massive, menacing presence.  He lifted a front hoof and dropped it.  He let out a snort that could as easily come from some massive, primeval monster.

I disengaged from the fence and stole quietly away.  No amount of trout was worth chancing The Antichrist.  Several of my friends had already had close calls with him, and I had no desire to repeat their experiences.

But the closest call we ever had with The Antichrist happened two or three years later and involved my friend Jon’s big-city cousin Albert and a time-honored country kid tradition:  A snipe hunt.

Now most folks nowadays wouldn’t fall for this stunt.  Even the most urbane of urban dwellers have heard of this old trick, I suspect in part because of this Internet thing all the kids are doing these days.  But back in the late Seventies, the Internets weren’t even a gleam in Al Gore’s eyes yet, and precautionary information traveled more slowly.

So, when my buddy Jon’s cousin Albert was coming to visit from Chicago, we had no trouble selling him on the exciting adventure of a nighttime snipe hunt.  Albert’s family were staying with Jon’s aunt and uncle in town, but Albert had spent quite a bit of time hanging out with us out in the boonies, and was taking rather enthusiastically to fishing, camping and woods-bumming; in other words, a typical summer.

We set the date for our snipe hunt on a warm July weekend.  Albert’s folks dropped him off at the Hooper place that Saturday afternoon.  I was already in residence; Jon and I had been plotting for two hours before Albert showed up.  All was in readiness.

Jon had through mysterious means obtained a large burlap sack, big enough to contain a small elephant.  I had a small, cheap plastic flashlight.  The hill we chose for the exercise contained some of the nastiest brush to be found in northeast Iowa – acres of blackberry brambles, sumac thickets, and towering oaks that blocked out the sun even on the brightest of days; the evening coming promised only the thinnest of sliver moons to light the forest.  Perfect!

The day ended, and after supper the three of us were standing in the Hooper barnyard planning strategy.

“OK, since you’re new, Albert,” Jon was saying, “You’ll have to stand in the brush and hold the sack.  The thing is, you can’t shoot at night, so what we’ll do is to loop around up to the top of the hill and sort of drive the snipe down to you.  You stand and hold the sack and catch the snipe as they come a-runnin’ down the hill.”

“Won’t they fly?”  Albert wanted to know.

“Nope.”  I assured him.  “Snipes only fly in daylight.  They’d rather run after dark, that way they don’t run into trees and such.”

Albert looked around at the gathering gloom.

“Are you sure?” he quavered.

“Hey!”  Jon protested, using a phrase that foretold unspeakable horror to anyone who knew Jon and I better.  “Trust us!”

We drove out to a quiet stretch of country road.  “Up there,” Jon indicated one particularly large, dark hillside covered with hardwood timber.  “That’s where were going.”

We climbed out of The Van, hopped a barbed wire fence, and headed up the hill.  It was a good mile from the road that we placed Albert, holding his sack, on the edge of a blackberry thicket.

“We’ll have to take the flashlight, Albert.”  Jon informed our victim.  “We’ll need it to see our way up to the top.”

“Uh, ok….” Albert sounded doubtful.  There under the trees it was darker than a crow’s wing in a pile of coal on a dark night.  We left Albert holding the bag, and aided by the anemic flashlight beam, trooped on up the hill.

Jon and I had forgotten one crucial detail about this hillside, where this evening there grazed a herd of Holstein cattle.  We had neglected to consider who owned this hill overlooking the Waterloo Creek valley.

Once we were out of earshot of Albert’s stand, we could no longer contain our glee at his predicament.

“Now,” Jon was telling me, “we can loop around over the top of the hill and down the other side, and then we’ll follow the road back to The Van.  We can go into town and have something to eat.  We’ll go back and get old Albert about 2AM, hawhawhawhaw!!”

“Hawhawhawhaw!!”  I replied.  “I can’t wait to see the look on his face after four hours in those woods!!  This is gonna be great!!”

We’d forgotten about the lynchpin of the Duffy dairy herd.

“Hawhawhawhaw!” Jon and I laughed our way through the woods, up the hill to the meadow on the top.

As Jon and I entered the open meadow at the top of the hill, we were still filled with mirth.  We had forgotten that his father was grazing his cattle in the high meadow.

A deep, rolling snort echoed across the dark meadow.  We strained to see the source of the sound; even in the open it was too dark to see much of anything.

“Haw?”  Jon querulously asked the darkness.

Somewhere out in the darkness, The Antichrist stomped one foot.  A tremor went through the ground beneath our feet; several branches fell from the trees behind us.  Jon looked at me, his eyes wide with terror.

“It’s The Antichrist!”  Jon shouted at me.  “I forgot about him!”

“What should we do?”  I shouted back.

“RUN!!!”  Jon screeched.

The thunder of hoofbeats was already drumming in the dark, getting louder by the second.

To say that we ran for our lives is the grossest of understatements.  We flew down that hill.  We crashed through thickets in which a bulldozer would have helplessly bogged down.  We ran over and snapped off saplings four and five inches thick, without notice.  About one-third of the way down was a ravine; on the way up we’d been required to climb carefully down one side and scramble up the other.  On the way down, both of us leaped the 20-foot chasm without missing a stride.  Behind us was the ever-present thunder of hooves, slowly gaining on us; The Antichrist plowed a 6-foot wide swath through the trees; the farmer who owned the place in fact gained a full winter’s worth of firewood from the felled timber.

At one point during our headlong flight, dimly in the recesses of my subconscious, I recalled that we’d left Albert on the edge of a thicket nearby.  He must have heard our headlong rush to escape a ton of pounding, snorting death; he called out to us.

“Are there any snipe, guys?  Are the snipe coming?”  I had a sudden flashed mental image of Albert standing, holding his sack, unaware of the onrushing Death in the darkness.

“RUN!”  I shouted at Albert.

“What?  Why?” he shouted back.

“BULL!” both Jon and I bellowed at once.

Albert had been wearing new white sneakers.  As I flashed past Albert’s stand, I saw only a glimpse of two white sneakers and two huge, white eyes staring.  The hoofbeats were getting closer; I reached deep inside myself, pulled out a little bit of extra energy from some unknown place, and put on some speed.

The pounding behind me had doubled somehow; then, suddenly, I was passed in the dark by a flying pair of white sneakers.

It seems Albert had been a varsity sprinter on his Chicago school’s track team.  In his big-city ignorance of country ways, he didn’t realize how the ability to run like the very wind was frequently of great use in our hunting, fishing and camping adventures.  At least not until the thundering sound of The Antichrist’s charge reached his ears.  The very air crackled as Albert ran past us; a faint smell of ozone followed his flight.  Jon and I homed in on the trail of acrid odor and followed it all the way back to the road where Jon’s van was parked, where we easily cleared the 3-strand barbed wire with single, effortless arching leaps.

The Antichrist skidded to a stop, frustrated by the barbed wire, his intent of reducing us to minor portions of the landscape deterred.  We managed to halt our flight about 50 feet from the fence; the three of us turned to see The Antichrists’ beady, hateful eyes glittering at us in the faint glow of the moonlight.  The bull casually lowered his head, scored out a foot-long sliver from a wooden fencepost with one horn, and let out one more mighty snort which blew Albert’s hat off; then he slowly turned, and ponderously made his way off into the darkness, towards his waiting cows.

Albert bent over suddenly.  Jon grabbed for his arm, fearing he was fainting from terror.  I grabbed his other arm; Albert was shaking uncontrollably.  We both shook him, hoping to break him loose from whatever horror assailed him.

“Ha!  Ha!  HAHAHAHAHAA!!!!  Albert was laughing!  Not just laughing but laughing uproariously!  Not a terrified, hysterical laugh, but a wild, carefree laugh, as one who’s just witnessed what was very possibly the greatest act of comedy he’d ever see in his life.

“You guys…” he panted, when he finally regained the ability to speak, “you guys, you told me…”

“What?”  Jon demanded.  “What did we tell you?”

“You told me it was the most exciting hunting there was!” Albert giggled.  “I guess you sure showed me!  It was sure exciting after all, it sure was!”  Albert collapsed into the dust of the graveled road, clutching his sides.

Over Albert’s convulsing form, Jon and I looked at each other.  We were witnesses to a Phenomenon; one we’d never expected.  Despite all his citified manners, despite his pitiful lack of knowledge of fishing, shooting, hunting, tanning hides, running a trapline, or pretty much anything useful, Albert had the one quality that would gain him acceptance faster than any.

Albert was a good sport.

In time, he learned the rest.

Back at Fort Dix

“Cows,” my old Army buddy scoffed.  “The hell you say.  Ain’t nobody afraid of cows.”

Nearby, a kid from upstate New York suddenly popped upright.  “Cows? Where?”

Another guy, this one from rural Wyoming, snapped out of a doze.  “Cows?  I don’t want to get mixed up with cows.  They’ll have calves this time of year.  They get mean when they have calves.”

A third kid, this one from central Missouri, chimed in.  “Cows, oh, man, this is bad enough already without a bunch of damn cows wandering around.”

“Come on,” my big-city buddy replied to us all.  “You’re all a bunch of big corn-fed farm boys, and you’re telling me you’re afraid of cows?”

“Not afraid, so much,” the guy from Wyoming said.  We all knew he came from a long line of ranchers.  “Just real, real cautious.”

I could tell my big-city buddy didn’t believe us.  Most folks these days don’t think about cattle much. But even at the thought, my head came up automatically, scanning the open woods around us, not for Soviet soldiers, armored vehicle or even drill sergeants, but for cows.

As It Stands Today…

I’m still cautious around cows.

The stretches of Colorado landscape where I do my woods-bumming these days is frequently shared with cattle.  These are beef cattle, usually Herefords or the Hereford-Angus crosses known as black baldies.  These are reasonably tolerant cattle, and the fact that they spend summers on open range makes them cautious themselves and prone to staying away from people.

Also, bulls these days are mostly kept confined; AI (no, not that AI – Artificial Insemination) has replaced the need for most ranchers and farmers to herd a bull with their cows.  But occasionally, usually in the distance, I can hear the ringing bellow of a bull.  It’s a weirdly primal sound, one that still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Most of the folks hereabouts, though, fish and hike unmolested by cows, and so miss out on the chance to amass tales of adventure.  They really don’t know what they’re missing.

Note:  A preview from my upcoming autobiography, Life’s Too Short to Smoke Cheap Cigars (Or to Drink Cheap Whiskey.)

Modern Wildlife

Modern “wildlife watchers” are amazing.

We used to call such folks “birdwatchers,” but now they watch all manner of wildlife.  In the stretch of mountains where I regularly spend days and long weekends loafing around, (I disguise my loafing by calling it ‘fishing’ or ‘elk hunting’) even the skunks are beginning to complain about the retinues of binocular-wielding humans that follow them around all day.

Not even urban wildlife is safe from the prying eyes of humans.  I recently saw a couple engaging in some wildlife watching in the urban environs of Denver:

“See, just to the left of that dumpster.  It’s a Bearded Wino.”

“No, honey, check your Field Guide.  That’s a Mustachioed Dumpster Crawler.”

I quickly stepped in to correct the wildlife watching couple.  “You’ve got the older edition of Urban Wildlife of the Western United States,” I told them.  “You should check the new politically-sanitized edition.  What you have there is a Facial-Hair Enhanced Residentially Challenged Person.”

In the Beginning

My own bird and wildlife watching began at an early age, at least in part because I was surrounded most of the time by various birds and critters; it was hard not to watch them.  In fact, sometimes the wildlife would watch you, which could get downright unnerving.

At the tender age of twelve, a youth spent mostly in the hardwood forests of Northeast Iowa had taught me about most of the local flora and fauna, including the ubiquitous Barred Owl. These birds were known locally as “hoot owls” after one of their calls, a characteristic series of deep hoots, boomed out in a ringing, “Who cooks for you – who cooks for you-ALL.”

I’m not sure why the locals chose that name, though, because no other bird alive today is capable of the cacophony of screeches, wails and howls as the Barred Owl of the upper Midwest. The very presence of this virtuoso of the nighttime woods was the source our terror that dark night, as it was on many other nights in the deep forest.

I don’t know what possesses young boys to wander around in the woods at night. A nighttime forest can be a rather friendly place at times. In winter, when the leafless trees allow the moonlight in to reflect off the snow, the light will be bright enough to cast sharp shadows against the snow. But, in the late summer, when the trees have grown thick canopies of leaves that block out all but glimpses of the stars and the moon is new, the woods can be so deeply pitch black that navigation gets hazardous.

It was on just such a pitch-black night that my cousin, childhood friend, fishing buddy and partner in various mischief Bill and I decided to take a short cut through the woods, up a steep hill and across a meadow belonging to the Girl Scouts of America. The reason we decided to take this hike was simple, we had been fishing on the lower reaches of Bear Creek and my parent’s house was a good three miles if we followed the road back, but only a mile if we cut over a ridgeline, across the Girl Scout camp land and through my parent’s woods down to the house. Simple, right?

Twelve-year-old boys never undertake anything simple.

The hike started out great. In the relatively open ground of the creek bottom and the power line cut leading up to the Girl Scout land, starlight provided enough light even in the new moon. We couldn’t see much, but it was enough, and the friendly calls of whippoorwills accompanied us.

Not many people these days get to hear whippoorwills, their numbers have sadly diminished, due in large part to agricultural chemicals and habitat loss. In our youth they were legion, and the endless repetition of their namesake call rang through the woods at night all summer long. They called back and forth across the meadows on the hilltops, “whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will” and if you got close enough, you could hear the faint “chuck” at the end of each call. You might even catch a glimpse of the cigar-shaped body and rounded wings of the birds as it fluttered to a new calling spot.

Bill and I had a great time walking across the open ground leading up to my folk’s upper meadow, trying to locate each whippoorwill as it flushed. But that changed when we entered my parent’s woods, under the great overhanging oaks and hickories. The whippoorwills stayed out on the edges and didn’t venture far into the thick forest. In the tall trees our vision was useless as even the faint starlight was blocked out. The darkness was a tangible presence as we slipped silently through the forest night. Our eyesight was useless, but we knew danger was everywhere. Strange sounds echoed through the trees, eerie presences whisked by overhead, and small things scuttled past underfoot. A cold breeze rattled through the tree branches.

“I can’t see a dang thing!” Bill exclaimed.

I was waving my hands out front, feeling my way from tree to tree. “Don’t worry about it, I know every tree in these woods.”

Bill wasn’t too comforted by my show of confidence.

But Then…

The silence of the forest was broken by a series of eight deep, booming hoots from the hillside above and behind us.

“Hoooo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-awww.”

“Hoot owl!” I told Bill. “I ever show you how I can call hoot owls?”

“No,” Bill replied, “But right now I’d rather you show me the way back down to your house.”

“Aw, c’mon.” I insisted. “Watch this, it’s great.” I tipped back my head and howled back at the owl: “Hoooo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-awww.”

Three answering series of hoots sounded from varying directions. “Geez, Bill, I got three of ‘em answering! This will be great!” In the silent darkness, I somehow got the impression Bill was adopting a skeptical expression.

“Hoooo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-awww.” I howled again at the birds. Three answering series of hoots rang out, closer now.

“See, they’re coming right in! Watch this, I’ll call them right in on top of us.”

“I don’t think I like this. Maybe you oughtta leave the owls alone.” Bill advised. Despising Bill’s sudden display of the better part of valor, I belted out another owl call.

“Hoooo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-awww.”

Silence.

“Maybe we better head on back now.” Bill whispered. An ominous presence seemed to be gathering around us.

Owls, you see, can fly in complete silence, due to soft downy edges on their flight feathers. This feature enables them to float softly up on an unsuspecting rabbit or mouse; it also enables them to drift in on what seems to be a strange, rival owl calling threateningly on the edge of their hunting range. They will do this even if the strange rival is really a twelve-year old boy.

As much as I can reconstruct from the awful moments that followed, three owls drifted in on silent wings, each expecting a rival, and each finding one – the other two owls, in fact, that I’d likewise tolled in with my patented owl call. The first owl to sense the others must have reacted in typical hoot-owl fashion.

One moment Bill and I were crouched silently under the giant oaks, listening carefully to a night where a few insects seemed to be the only other living things about. The next, a horrifying sound split the night wide; a cross between the wailing of a lost soul, and the enraged screech of a wildcat attacking to defend her young, cast forth at the decibel level of a train whistle. The other two owls responded in kind.

The scream of an enraged hoot owl facing an adversary would cause an axe murderer to cringe in terror. We were two twelve-year old boys with three of them sending horrifying challenges ringing back and forth in the trees above our heads. Only one course of action lay open to us.

“RUN!” Bill shouted.

“FOLLOW ME!” I shouted back, already shifting into high gear. “I KNOW EVERY TREE IN THESE…”

WHAMM!!!

A rock-hard object hit me in the face, an explosion of light resolved slowly into a constellation of stars, wheeling slowly in front of my face. “Funny, I thought the trees were too thick to see the stars here, and why are they spinning?” Then I realized I was laying on my back. I’d run headlong into a white oak tree.

The shrieks of three maddened banshee owls rang through the night; faintly, I could hear the crashing of Bill’s fleeing tennis shoes. Then, WHACK! Bill charged into a shagbark hickory with enough force to drive bits of bark into his forehead.

I managed to get to my feet, terror of the horrible wailing driving me on. I’d gone perhaps ten feet when I clipped another tree trunk in the pitch dark and went spinning to the ground again. A few feet away, I heard Bill using language that would have caused his mother to run for a stout switch, as he proceeded to slam into tree trunk after tree trunk like a small, frightened ball in a giant, darkened pinball machine.

Somehow, slamming from tree to tree in the pitch dark, we managed to make it back down the creek bottom to my parent’s house. In the dim light shining from the porch, we splashed across the creek to collapse gasping in the front yard. The owls still screeched faintly in the background.

“Well,” I informed Bill, in between gasps, “I told you I knew where every tree was.”

I’m amazed to this day that Bill had the strength to attack me after our ordeal, but attack he did, and I fought him off at the cost of a black eye and two badly bruised fists.

As It Stands

In years following, I spent many a night in the woods, listening with great enjoyment to the wailing of hoot owls in their nocturnal battles, and I even called a few more in by mimicking their eight-hoot call. I exchanged a few conversations with owls perched in trees right overhead, their sudden challenges never frightened me again the way they did that first time. To this day, the call of a hoot owl fills me with nostalgia. Deep inside, though, somewhere down in the recesses of my psyche, there remains a twelve-year old boy who will always know a few moments of panic, recalling that night. I generally get over that moment of dread. Of course, I do have my confident knowledge of the northeast Iowa forests to my advantage.

After all, I know every tree in those woods.