Vouyer

Hunting Saturday I dumped an ice cream pail of persimmons on the ground and went back to my blind 2 hrs before dark. I'd been bringing persimmons for weeks. Strait away, a fox came out and began to gorge on the sweet fruits. I wanted them for deer, so I stood up and waved. He didn't care. I walked toward him, looking like Sasquatch in leafy suit which may simply have been neighborly, who knows? He grabbed a mouthful and ran when I was 60 feet away. 30 minutes later, a bobcat stepped out 30 feet away, tail twitching. I moved a bit and lined him in the sites. Deer hunters are allowed and encouraged to take one bobcat, but I couldn't convince myself that is what I needed to do. He (she?) walked dead away looking back at me every 3-5 meters. At 90 meters it broke left into a run. A short time later, to the right, a call, semi-feline roaring with a hint of peacock came from the treeline beyond the forty acres that the timber was cut off this summer. I couldn't identify the source. I wondered if the cat had caught a large protesting bird...

At dusk the fox came back. I didn't stand again because this is the prime time for deer to move. He gorged. Then the calls came again. His head snapped up, and he tore off in the direction of the calls. Within five minutes, two foxes were back devouring my sweets. "Would you like dinner, my dear, before we consummate? I know just the place..."

A week later, after it got dark, I went down to the spot I watch and turned 50 degrees west and sat down on another leg of the utility right of way. I knew no one was home to warm me, so I embraced the comfort of the cold, an internal glow from the exertion complementing the kiss of chills on my cheeks. I sat and tried to discern how much light there still is in the dark, playing with my peripheral visions. A fox was calling in the distance, then one roared about 25 feet away. Even my blood tingled in fear, my long absent fur bristling on the nape of my neck. I was down wind and she never knew I was there. She growled a bit, between yowls; and built from a growl when she would roar. A male came from down wind, I think; I saw something faint about that size retreat quickly, probably after smelling or seeing me. She roared a dozen times and drifted north and away. I couldn't stop grinning. It finally got dark enough to only see stars. I had posted my head against a six inch pine tree; and looked through an oak canopy. The stars began to  wink free at the edges. I realized I was seeing the stars move... Or the ground under my rump was rotating under the sky in the slow motion dimension I was visiting. The rotation of the planet was perceptible!

I thought about the twenty years I have hunted in these woods; realizing where I was was a pasture in the beginning. Planted in row pines less than ten years ago, the grass was still there, being slowly smothered in the accumulation of needles. The woods across the barb wire fence, that were too thick to walk through, had been harvested selectively twice, and last summer was stripped to broken tops and sheared stumps. Now the weeds and sprouts come up around the ruts. I heard the squeak of flying squirrels, like a child's first time to turn a wrench on the hub nut of a bicycle to fix a flat ...

And remembered the times I stayed up late in a stand to try to see specter deer that I could hear crunching my corn like a child crunching popcorn or snap my head looking in vain for rustles below me. Once, a little flying squirrel came into my stand and crawled on my arm, and began to chew on my glove, sitting on my palm. I looked down, but it was too dark to see him. I closed my fingers a bit, to avoid an accidental bite, and felt his jump and heard him hit the leaves below, and dash off...

I stood up, came home, cooked dinner and ate, did the dishes and lit a fire so my wife would have a warm home on her return.