The Curmudgeon, for no logical reason, was sitting in a tree with a rifle and drinking coffee. He had a Kindle was reading Little House on the Prairie. It was a good book. One of his favorites. He made time to read it every few years. Why he read it while in a tree is anyone’s guess.
From a considerable distance, he spied a Subaru. He knew everyone on this road and all adjacent roads. This was an interloper car. He reached into his pack and grabbed his binoculars.
To his surprise, a bear leapt out and charged through the underbrush. It was mid-winter, shouldn’t bears should be hibernating? Oddly, he ignored the Subaru. The brand of vehicle bears drove (or were chauffeured about in) was not his business. (The Curmudgeon took his libertarian disinterest in others to extremes.)
The bear crossed into his land and the Curmudgeon raised his rifle. Then he checked the calendar on his watch. Bear season was long over. Shit!
The bear rushed into the crater, grabbed the papers, and ran off to the west. It never saw him.
Apparently the secret demonic forces of the NSA (or whomever) had trained bears? He shrugged, and returned to his book. Pa was stuck in a blizzard and shit was getting real. This was one of the best parts of the story!
In the meantime, Doogie hiked with the squirrels to a nearby trailer park (with the squirrels providing advance scouting). Doogie, who was smart but naïve, assumed the trailer park would be largely deserted because “everyone would be at work”. The squirrel’s scouting informed him otherwise. (Later Billy got a huge laugh from Doogie’s “everyone is at work” idea. The squirrels, steeped in the internet as they were, didn’t know what a “job” was. The bear ignored all parties and scratched his ass.)
Fortunately, nobody notices squirrels. With their expert guidance, Doogie slithered undetected to a vantage point between a wrecked car, an abandoned refrigerator, and a collapsed shed. From there he detected three different wifi antennae.
Doogie noticed one that showed the signs of an entrepreneurial would be chemist (a.k.a. a meth-cooking meathead). Doogie latched onto it based on the reasoning that the more potential “leads” the NSA could sniff out, the less they’d be likely to delve further and find him.
If you think everyone “ought to be at work” when it’s noon in the trailer park, feel free to click below:
