Squirrels: Chapter 8: Part 01: Smartfish

Please enjoy the next post in Murdertrout, Chapter 8 of “Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels“. Comments are always welcome. Tips via the PayPal link to the right are also welcome but always optional.

Merry Christmas and happy reading.

High in the gorgeous Rocky Mountains, pure cold snowmelt gathers into rushing frothing streams. There, nurtured in the chaotic rippling current, trout live, grow, and die… never once filing a tax return. Basking in the thin clear alpine light and bursting with vitality of mountain life they attract the attention of overwrought ape-descendants who occasionally lumber about the streambanks. One such fisherman was having a bad day. The fish were outclassing everything he threw at them.

Temporarily blind to the heartbreaking beauty all around him, the grumpy, slouching, woodsman clutched a slender fly fishing rod with hands more accustomed to shrieking chainsaws than a shaft of spindly carbon fiber. He cast his line into spruce trees. He twisted his ankles on wet rocks. During one near miss, where he and the rod almost wound up in the stream, he inadvertently dropped a perfectly good sandwich into the rushing current!

In short, he sucked at fly fishing.

Having snapped his leader yet again, and subsequently gone half cross-eyed retying yet another painstakingly created fly (this one doomed to be lost just like all the others) he stumbled on poor footing and found himself deeper than he’d intended. Ice cold water splashed onto the already soaked denim. Stoic but not stupid, The Curmudgeon paused to rethink his life’s choices. When your nuts are exposed to icy water, it’s time to step back and regroup. He admitted defeat. These fish were just too smart. The current too strong. The sandwich… lost forever.

He cursed and made his way across treacherous rocks onto the firm shore. He could see the fish out there. But would they rise to even his best cast? No! The little bastards saw right though him.

He stomped back to his truck. Time to make a tactical retreat and leave these wild and beautiful fish to their mountain redoubt. He’d shift to a place he’d discovered not long ago. It was further down the mountain. If he was going to catch anything at all, it would not because he’d bested these spirits of the mountains. Instead he’d have to find their dumber cousins; stupid gullible fish.

As to be expected of any proper woodsman, he changed into dry clothes right next to his truck; in front of God and everybody. Lucky for him, nobody was around. Actually, not lucky at all. His sense of modesty was more a sense that his life was none of your damn business. If the vicinity had held a suburbanite Karen doing whatever suburbanite Karens do (yoga perhaps?) it wouldn’t have bothered The Curmudgeon one bit. He figured he was in “his” forest. Up here, among the spruce and rocks, if you didn’t want to see his hairy ass, you’d better have the common sense to look away.

Fortunately, for the man had a tendency to derail plotlines, nothing of the sort happened. Soon he was sitting on his tailgate, enjoying the glory of warm dry clothes, and scanning the horizon. It usually takes chemical imbalance, war, or genuine psychosis to make a man as wary as he’d become about scanning the horizon. He was a special case. A recent “exploding oak incident” had taken root in a mind already leaning towards tinfoil hats. He ceaselessly scanned the skies; like a mouse on the open prairie (though perhaps an aggressive and armed mouse).

The skies were clear and empty. That was good. He took a swig from his flask and mourned his lost sandwich. Between now and dinner, he’d have to subsist on bourbon and M&Ms; not that this bothered him much. He was as tough as he was grouchy. He’d arranged his life as a series of personal challenges that would kill a soft urbane twit at twenty paces. His greatest fears were soft pillows, easy desk jobs, and Government stormtroopers. So far he’d avoided all three quite handily. Besides, bourbon and chocolate go great together.

He caught a glimpse of something aloft. He grabbed binoculars that looked like they could pick out grains of sand on the moon. He watched carefully. He was observing flight patterns and motion even before he could get a clear look at the object itself.

It didn’t have the mechanical signature of a drone. Nor did it exhibit the innate mastery of thermals a soaring bird such as a vulture or eagle would display. It wasn’t a fluttering puffball of a songbird meant for treetops. It lacked the purposeful motion of migratory waterfowl.

It was uncanny, clearly of natural origin, yet it was wandering to and fro like a fool. It descended a bit and The Curmudgeon got his first good look. It was a hawk. It was natural in appearance if not flight.

“A hawk.” The Curmudgeon announced aloud to nobody (for there was nobody to hear it). He watched a bit longer and then concluded. “A stupid hawk. Probably an asshole.”

Satisfied, he stowed his binoculars and drove off. The hawk, erratically, followed.