Brian
Well-known member
So I arrived at my bosses house for a short extra work day on Saturday. We were playing catch up on fire wood with 6 or 8 cords needing to be delivered, and we were going to at least cut that in half. I drove down the road to his field, home to our shooting range, some log truck equipment, annnnd....the endless pile of firewood.
I got there and Boss had his trailer loaded with 2 cords of Birch. Strangest thing that people want so much Birch this year when we have the best Red Fir and Western Larch you can find for sale...but that's another story for another day. Because when I got out of my car, Boss was staring at the ground and motioned me over.
It was a hoof print.
"Veg, look at this honeysuckle. Do you know what that is?" He asked. Every year around this time, Boss gets the hunting itch for the same elusive prey: The biggest bull Elk he can possibly find. He never finds it, sadly, but today he was dead certain that he was looking at an elk track right in his own back yard. "That's an Elk track, veg. A goddamn Elk track. Can you believe that honeysuckle? In my own field!" He laughed. We talked for a minute and determined that the other worker would be there in about 30 minutes. So he set off for his delivery, and I set to work trying to get the wood splitter to start. Fifteen minutes and some starting fluid later, and I was having the time of my life: standing there pulling a lever, loading blocks of firewood in to the splitter. Hot **** that's a hoppin' good time.
Caleb showed up, half stoned as ever. Or maybe it's just the hangover from -last night's- stonedness; it's pretty hard to tell. So we'll just say he showed up in typical Caleb style, and talked just as quiet as ever. You'd have to meet Caleb to understand, but you never will because Caleb lives in a little hole way the hell out in Nowhere, surrounded by scraggly trees and junk cars and tiny yapping Chihuahuas. A dark place where the power grid does not reach, where the sane and wise do not tread, and where running water is a rumor perpetuated by the city folk.
But Caleb's a good enough guy. He's just a bit weird like that.
We split wood for probably an hour and a half, even though it felt like four hours. We had a sizeable pile of split birch, almost equal to what was behind us. Now, Caleb and I, we have a system, and it goes like this: Caleb picks up wood, gives the wood to me. I put it in the splitter, split the wood, and huck it on the pile while Caleb finds another log and throws the tiny pieces in with the split stuff. But for some reason, Caleb wasn't there with the next block of wood. I was snapped from my trance by this turn of events. Shocked. Scared, even. What could lure Caleb away from his life's duty?
I turned to my left, and there Caleb was, staring off behind me, his mouth open in a baffled half-laugh. What, Caleb? What is it boy? Is someone stealing your junk cars?
He pointed and stammered. "Veg! Veg, look!" Something had his attention. And come to think about it, something...didn't smell right. In fact, something outright stank. So I looked.
Holy honeysuckle.
...A Llama?
Sure enough, the shaggiest, dumbest lookin' creature I ever saw was there staring at us, twitching its ears. We could see it's teeth, like it was grinning at an inside joke. What did it want? Was it angry? Where did it come from? We don't have Llamas in North Idaho. ..Do we?
It stared us down in silence, challenging us. The wood splitter ran out of gas and sputtered to a halt, punctuating this dark omen. "Caleb...what do we do? You lived with goats in your house once, what do we do?"
Caleb looked at me, sure as ever on his course of action. "We chase it, Veg. We chase it and make sounds, or else that hairy ******'s gonna spit at us."
So we did.
I don't know what sound a Llama makes. Maybe it can't be heard by human ears, or perhaps the Llama's dark utterance is a sacrilegious chorus reserved only for the end of days. But I do know they put on a big show without packing a big stick, because when we charged at it shouting "LLLLLAAMA, LLAMA LLAMA", it bolted. Er...jogged. I'm not sure how to describe it's gait, but suffice it to say it ran off, back in to the woods from whence it came.
And guess what the prints looked like? Yep. Boss's Elk wasn't so Elky after all. Boss has a Llama lurking in his trees, waiting for another opportunity to appear.
And the moral of the story is, next time, I'm going to convince Caleb to jump on and ride the Llama, because that's way better than splitting wood all day.
I got there and Boss had his trailer loaded with 2 cords of Birch. Strangest thing that people want so much Birch this year when we have the best Red Fir and Western Larch you can find for sale...but that's another story for another day. Because when I got out of my car, Boss was staring at the ground and motioned me over.
It was a hoof print.
"Veg, look at this honeysuckle. Do you know what that is?" He asked. Every year around this time, Boss gets the hunting itch for the same elusive prey: The biggest bull Elk he can possibly find. He never finds it, sadly, but today he was dead certain that he was looking at an elk track right in his own back yard. "That's an Elk track, veg. A goddamn Elk track. Can you believe that honeysuckle? In my own field!" He laughed. We talked for a minute and determined that the other worker would be there in about 30 minutes. So he set off for his delivery, and I set to work trying to get the wood splitter to start. Fifteen minutes and some starting fluid later, and I was having the time of my life: standing there pulling a lever, loading blocks of firewood in to the splitter. Hot **** that's a hoppin' good time.
Caleb showed up, half stoned as ever. Or maybe it's just the hangover from -last night's- stonedness; it's pretty hard to tell. So we'll just say he showed up in typical Caleb style, and talked just as quiet as ever. You'd have to meet Caleb to understand, but you never will because Caleb lives in a little hole way the hell out in Nowhere, surrounded by scraggly trees and junk cars and tiny yapping Chihuahuas. A dark place where the power grid does not reach, where the sane and wise do not tread, and where running water is a rumor perpetuated by the city folk.
But Caleb's a good enough guy. He's just a bit weird like that.
We split wood for probably an hour and a half, even though it felt like four hours. We had a sizeable pile of split birch, almost equal to what was behind us. Now, Caleb and I, we have a system, and it goes like this: Caleb picks up wood, gives the wood to me. I put it in the splitter, split the wood, and huck it on the pile while Caleb finds another log and throws the tiny pieces in with the split stuff. But for some reason, Caleb wasn't there with the next block of wood. I was snapped from my trance by this turn of events. Shocked. Scared, even. What could lure Caleb away from his life's duty?
I turned to my left, and there Caleb was, staring off behind me, his mouth open in a baffled half-laugh. What, Caleb? What is it boy? Is someone stealing your junk cars?
He pointed and stammered. "Veg! Veg, look!" Something had his attention. And come to think about it, something...didn't smell right. In fact, something outright stank. So I looked.
Holy honeysuckle.
...A Llama?
Sure enough, the shaggiest, dumbest lookin' creature I ever saw was there staring at us, twitching its ears. We could see it's teeth, like it was grinning at an inside joke. What did it want? Was it angry? Where did it come from? We don't have Llamas in North Idaho. ..Do we?
It stared us down in silence, challenging us. The wood splitter ran out of gas and sputtered to a halt, punctuating this dark omen. "Caleb...what do we do? You lived with goats in your house once, what do we do?"
Caleb looked at me, sure as ever on his course of action. "We chase it, Veg. We chase it and make sounds, or else that hairy ******'s gonna spit at us."
So we did.
I don't know what sound a Llama makes. Maybe it can't be heard by human ears, or perhaps the Llama's dark utterance is a sacrilegious chorus reserved only for the end of days. But I do know they put on a big show without packing a big stick, because when we charged at it shouting "LLLLLAAMA, LLAMA LLAMA", it bolted. Er...jogged. I'm not sure how to describe it's gait, but suffice it to say it ran off, back in to the woods from whence it came.
And guess what the prints looked like? Yep. Boss's Elk wasn't so Elky after all. Boss has a Llama lurking in his trees, waiting for another opportunity to appear.
And the moral of the story is, next time, I'm going to convince Caleb to jump on and ride the Llama, because that's way better than splitting wood all day.
