When I was in Boy Scouts, my troop and I traveled by ScoutBus to a weeklong
camp in Laramie Wyoming.
This was the longest trip that my troop and I had yet made together
(starting from Lincoln, NE) and we fueled our excitement and enthusiasm on the
multitude of snacks and sodas that we bought each time the old bus stopped for gas.
On the last stop before arriving at the camp, my best friend and I bought a
big back of generic Cheetos. We munched on them till we nearly emptied the
bag and set it aside.
Getting to the camp we unloaded, were shown our individual campsite (there
were several troops at the camp from all over the U.S.) and went through a long
orientation process.
Overall the day proved to be quite fun and we stayed up long into the night
tending fires, and doing the sort of Scout-Camp things that such places are
known for. But, needless to say, when we finally crawled into our little
two-person tents, we were ready to sleep.
I shared a tent with my best friend. I had the good fortune to borrow a cot
from my grandfather (who had 'borrowed' it from the U.S. Navy) while my
friend had a 'mummy' bag on the floor of the tent.
I was woken in the middle of the night by my friend shaking my cot. I
started to sit up. It was very dark, though the moon showed bright through the
thin material of the tent. There was an odd crunching sound near the foot of
my cot.
As I woke and began to move, I must have said something along the lines of:
"Huuwaa?" because my friend spat in a horse whisper: "There's a skunk in the
tent!"
It didn't take my brain long, groggy though it was, to insert the proper
amount of fear into my system. Looking down over my body toward the sound of
crunching, I saw the small dark shape of a fuzzy animal. I couldn't see any
stripes, but I didn't doubt my friend's statement. After all, he was closer
then I was.
Very slowly, my friend began unzipping the tent flap behind him (while
keeping his eyes locked on the furry intruder who didn't seem to mind and was
still happily crunching away).
When the flap was open, he began crawling backward. When his head was
through, he turned onto all fours and, with a convulsive leap, dived out of the
tent.
The little munching figure tensed, arched it's little body and in my mind I
was directing all the curses I could think of to come crashing down upon my
friend should I get sprayed by the furry beast. But as I laid, half-sitting
up and half laying, not daring to move (or breath), it relaxed and resumed
crunching.
Slowly, I to began to crawl backard toward the half-open tent flap. I had
somewhat of a harder time since I was elevated and tended to sleep in my jeans
which insisted on getting caught on every hook of my sleeping bag.
At last however, I too was 'safely' outside. Having forsaken the tent to
it's new occupant, and not knowing what else to do, I was just thinking about
laying down on the grass to rest a while (or at least till the skunk left) but
my friend (who was in only his underwear and in no mood to sleep on the
grass) went to wake our scoutmaster in the next tent. He was a decent enough
fellow and seemed generally woodcrafty, so I agreed.
When we finally got him awake (if it can be called it) his advice was less
then heartening: "Get it out, then go to sleep."
Neither my friend nor I had any skill in woodland diplomacy, nor did we know
how to say: "Can we please have our tent back" in skunkonese; so we stood
around for a while before finally (after a few rounds of "You look.." "No, you
look!") I peeked inside. Our nighttime invader had apparently gotten his
fill of plunder and ambled off in victory.
We managed to sleep the next few hours in peace, though as soon as the sun
was up, we were up with it.
The evidence of the night's raid were plain, as was the goal - the Cheetos.
My friend had thought that I had eaten the last of them, and I thought that
he had thrown them away. But there it was...
Later that morning, during our first 'formation', the camp directors warned
us that a skunk (nicknamed 'Oreo') lived in the camp and that we were all to
make sure we didn't startle it.
F'ing D'uh.
D.O.P.R
Received on Tue Dec 05 2006 - 17:00:45 CST