Legend

Day Two Rude Awakening

The following morning I was woken up by the sound of the wind whistling through the tent flaps. Wait, the tent flaps? I was startled awake by this sound. Sure enough the tent flaps were open and it was now daytime. I could’ve swore I shut the tent back up last night. I zipped it back up as I got outside to see the rest of the camp in dismay.

“What the hell happened here last night?” I said to myself looking around everywhere. Our snack bag was torn into and scattered everywhere. Luckily it looked like we still had snacks left. I also looked towards my clothes bag to see it in shambles as well.

“Looks like these are the clothes I’m wearing for the rest of the trip.” I said, looks like our strategy of placing our things besides the tent instead of inside the tent didn’t pay off. All around our camp were huge footprints, to me they looked like a bear but I wasn’t for sure. I quickly cleaned up camp before my wife got up so as not to worry her. After I got everything cleaned I took my bags and put all my clothes in my bag. I also put all the snacks I salvaged and placed them back in our snack pack.

My wife got up a few minutes later as I got everything put away. As she looked out with her eyes trying to adjust to the sunlight she asked, “Hey babe. What’s going on? Why you looking through our bags?”

“Don’t worry about that honey.” I said realizing that our brats hadn’t been gone through and neither was our sausage.

I decided than to cook us a sausage breakfast to get us some energy for the day. We got a drink from our canteens and started off for the top of the mountain.

We had been walking for a couple hours at this point when we decided to take a break. I went off the relive myself of fluid. While on my way to find a spot to relieve myself, I started to smell a fowl odor. I walked around to see if I could find the source of it when I heard my wife suddenly scream. I ran back to my wife to see what was going on. After walking up on her I realized why she screamed. By a big old willow tree was a carcass of a bear. This didn’t look normal though, at least to me. You see, this bear had had its legs broken backwards on it. The insides were also ripped out of it with no sign of a clean cut. Looked more like something clawed the thing to death. The smell now very strong as I looked upon this sight in awe.

“What in the world?” I said struggling to find an answer to this brutal killing. My wife was sobbing at this point. She never liked finding animals mangled in anyway shape or form. I just reminded her that a pack coyotes probably just came up to it after it died to get a free meal. I really didn’t know what could’ve done this. Coyotes have claws but they would take more swipes to get through the flesh of a bear. Same with mountain lions, and mind you. We are out in the middle of nowhere trying to have fun so we know we didn’t cut this bear up. So the question remains. What on earth killed that bear? What on earth is even capable of doing that amount of damaged to another animal in the woods like that?

We decided not to stick around much longer and started walking to get away from the rotten stench that was in the air. We were ready to get to our spot at the top of the mountain anyway and it showed.

The rest of the way up the mountain we didn’t stop to take one break. We even got to our spot way ahead of when we anticipated we would. It was an awfully quiet hike though. Not so much as a tree rat running around or a raccoon scurrying around on the ground. Just nothing but silence. Very odd considering the fact that these woods are normally full of life. When we got to our spot we sat for a bit and tried calming down. We were still in a bit of shock over seeing that bear cut to ribbons like it was.

“Are you ok babe?” I asked my wife after calming down a second.

“Not really! I’m still kinda terrified! What could’ve did that to that bear?” She said looking at me scared.

“I’m pretty sure coyotes can do that. The bear died of natural causes and the coyotes picked at its remains babe. I’m sure we will be fine.” I reassured her with a nod.

“Are you sure babe?” She asked me sincerely.

“Yes I’m sure.” I said confidently while not being confident at my words. She sighed and looked at me.

“Ok, we’ll I’ll make dinner tonight babe. It would take my mind off things anyway.” She said while looking towards the bags that still had a little bit of meat left.

“I think there might be some ribeyes left if you want to try you hand at that.” I said smiling at her as I did so.

“I think I might try something with that. Might be interesting.” She gleamed as she walked over into the woods to look for firewood. “You coming big guy?” She asked me while walking away.

“Yes!” I said laughing as she walked into the woods. I started after her and we walked around gathering firewood for a few minutes. We got back to the opening and put up our tent. We than started a fire with the wood we collected from the woods not far from us. It was starting to get dark around that time and my wife decided to cook the ribeyes real quick while I got our stuff put away in our tent. We decided that we rather the critters claw at our tent for the food rather than have them destroy our bag again.

The ribeyes my wife cooked turned out really good this night. The meat on the steak was so juicy and full with the meat just easily coming off the bone. Very good and mouth watering meal indeed. Filling as well, I got full off it really quick. Well worth the wait hands down. My wife had always been a great cook. Being able to cook really good chicken alfredo and all kinds of other meals. I knew how to cook as well, but I preferred her cooking over mine any-day.

“Babe, that meal was delicious.” I told her after finishing.

“Thank you honey, you aren’t to bad of a cook either. I loved the brats the other day.” She said to me smiling a bit before going back to a frown almost.

“What’s a matter babe?” I asked her while putting my arm around her.

“I don’t know I’m just thinking.” She sighed

“Thinking about what babe?” I asked again.

“Well, what if there is something else out here that might’ve gotten that bear? Like a bigger bear or something else?” She asked me.

“What else could there be out here babe?” I asked her in a calm manner.

“Well like, I don’t know. I’m just worried about that. That could be a sign of something bigger out here.” She says while snuggling closer to me.

“Babe if there is, I won’t let it hurt you. Never!” I told her reassuring her that she is ok and that there is nothing to worry about.

“You promise babe?” She asked me.

“I cross my heart babe.” I tell her holding her closer to me than before. She smiled even wider at me. She than closed her eyes and embraced me. When than kissed each other giving us both a heart racing moment. With big smiles on both of our faces, we held each other tight in front of the fire that we had made. After a few minutes we started noticing that the fire was getting dimmer.

“I’m going to throw a couple more logs on the fire babe.” I told her standing up and walking over the the sticks and logs we gathered from inside the woods. After throwing a few more logs on along with a couple sticks, I sat down besides her again. I cuddled her again right when all of the sudden we heard a cracking of a branch from inside the woods a ways.

“What was that?” My wife asked with a little bit of a concern rushing over her face.

“It’s just a deer babe. Probably walking around us trying to avoid being caught by us.” I said boldly and without hesitation. I thought it was odd though because there was no sound except for a stray cricket here and there. Than another crack off in that direction. My mind is racing trying to find a logical answer, but I swear it sounded like a branch got snapped. Not like just got weak and fell off crack. More like a fresh and nice form branch just got snapped. My wife, now even more scared than before decided it best to get into the tent. I would follow close behind making sure to keep her calm while I did so.

Once inside the tent I zipped up the tent and listened. We than heard what sounded like running all around our campsite. However, it sounded so off and wrong. Where a deer gallops across the land, this thing was running one foot in front of the other. Now I didn’t mention this before but, I’ll mention it now. I’m a hunter, born and raised in the woods from jump. I know what coyotes, bobcats, cougars, and any other animal in the woods sounds like when it runs. So, when I heard, whatever this thing was, was on two feet. I couldn’t rationalize it. What could be running like a human for that long in the middle of the woods? Than we heard a whistle in the distance. My wife, now in a state of hysteria, started crying like mad. She started telling me that we need to go home and we need to go now. I told her, “ Quiet down babe. We can’t do anything until morning. Right now we need to stay quiet and calm. We can worry about going home tomorrow.”

After a while of whistling going on and branches breaking everything stopped. Silence replaced the once active woods. So silent you could hear a pin drop. I carefully unzipped the tent and looked around. No movement at all, not even a cricket chirping. I zipped the tent back up and told my wife that things are ok. She sighed still with tears rolling down her cheeks. I wiped the tears from her face and hugged her tight.

“Babe, I’m so scared. What was that?” She said once I hugged her.

“I don’t know babe.” I said still trying to search through my mental data base of what type of animals it could’ve been.

After an hour of getting settled down and holding each other. We decided it would be best if we put the fire out and go to sleep for the night. Tomorrow we were going to abandon the trip. We had had enough of this. We weren’t going to be in these woods with whatever made all of those sounds.