“What was that?” I hollered at my dog Duke. No answer. Fine! Duke went on point.

“They are gone now, Duke.” I watched the birds fly away through the dense forest of trees. All of a sudden, I heard several gunshots ring out.

“What the hell was that?”  No one is supposed to be hunting here. It’s posted land. A feeling of dread crept through me, as I spied a stranger pulling a bloody man’s body across the path in front of me.

Kip Scott

My boss, the curator at our natural history museum, is known for his sense of theater, but today he’s over the top. I had brought my Cocker spaniel to work with me, as I had to take him to the vet in the afternoon.”Skippy” took one look at this hulking green monster and peed all over the carpet. He jumped up and down, barking his head off. My boss, Stephen, was wearing the outfit to kick off “meet the dinosaurs week” at the museum.  Not a “kick” for Skippy or me though. I picked up a few of his pellets, put him in his travel cage, and left early for the vet. Skippy probably didn’t need a flea bath anymore, as they were all scared away. He and I could use a couple of tall ones however at the local saloon.

Tom Rutherford

Was Billy still angry?

In spite of our Smack-down fight a week ago, I was hanging from a rawhide Reata knotted about my waist one quarter down the one hundred foot cliff. I had dropped hand over hand on the frayed two-inch jute rope as Billy let me down. Now I had let go of the jute and relied only on the rawhide. Billy was to keep the Reata from sliding across a rock above while I hung free and lifted the owlets into each sack looped under and over my belt.

Our wrestling for fun always turned into mad fights. Was Billy was still angry? Both rawhide and jute belonged to his dad and I’d not seen them before we borrowed them from his River Road Construction business truck. From the nest ledge, it was still about seventy-five feet to the huge sharp boulders at the cliff base. Neither rope would reach past the rocks and dropping from their ends would not be a painless choice.

Now Billy had to take up the slack in the rawhide as I climbed back up because neither of us trusted the frayed jute alone to hold my weight. Could I trust him? This was way past the best time to ask. I had won the Smack-down Billy started. He was really mad when he left and today was the first we’d met since that fight.

Donavin Leckenby