He was feeling his way through his woods now more than seeing the underbrush. He had walked the woods at night and his feet found the clear path through the roots and bushes. The moon light was still bright enough for him to cast a shadow when her light was allowed to reach the forest floor. The feeling that something was watching him seemed to be growing with every step. His heart began to beat so loudly he had trouble listening to the sounds around him. This is what a snow hare felt like just before the snow wolf attacked. He was now almost in a blind panic. All he could think of was getting back to the safety of his burrow.
The shadows of the forest began to take on menacing shapes and he began to see predators and killers next to every tree. Every bush he brushed up against hid a poisonous viper or rattle snake. Every branch he walked under supported some hideous spider hanging from it’s disgusting web waiting to drop down and bite him, eager to inject its venomous poison in his unprotected, unsuspecting neck. He wasn’t concentrating on anything. All he could feel was his fear. It had taken hold of him. He hadn’t felt fear like this possibly ever and it was going to kill him, he knew, but he could not get control of it and the panic had a firm hold of his mind.
Almost blind, he stumbled over a bush and fell face first into the pine needle strewn ground. The earthy smell that he had become so used to over the past year and a half seemed so comforting. He allowed his hands to reach out and grab hold of the earth. The smell of home relaxed him, and he breathed deep the perfume of the forest. The solid earth that he dragged from its place with his fingers felt so wonderful, it was tangible, and that simple feeling of earth evaporated the shadows that had robbed him of his senses. He closed his eyes and forced his heart to slow, and he listened to his forest. The gentle song of the forest was absent. The birds did not sing and he realized that he had not heard the howl of a wolf or coyote tonight.
His forest was silent.
He concentrated on the lack of music around him and from the silence around him he heard it. It was very faint and still far off but it was there. Carried on the back of the wind, so faint he wasn’t surprised that he had missed it in his panic, were the voices of people.
What would people be doing here? They couldn’t be hunters. They were being too loud for that. The sound of their voices was coming from the west. His burrow was to the west, but only about a thousand feet maybe.
He got up. The feeling of being watched had disappeared and the fear was completely gone from his system. He crouched down and moved through the forest like a predator hunting his prey He moved through the underbrush, the whisper of his feet as they stepped on the soft pine needles was the only sound he made. He slid from shadow to shadow as he used the trees for protection. The forest was his home and the men he sought were in his back yard. He crouched next to a large redwood he looked out through the forest and saw the harsh beams of manmade flashlights cut through the beauty of the night like a razor and it dimmed everything around them. There were quite a few of them. The beams did a great job of illuminating what they were pointing at, but if he could avoid the direct beams, they wouldn’t be able to see him.
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Staying low to the ground he moved closer. He could count about ten or twelve beams with more being turned on and off at irregular intervals. What in the hell was going on? Using the shadows as his armor he moved closer. He could hear the voices more clearly. They were not trying to be quiet. He was becoming irritated at the lack of respect these men showed the night and to his forest. There was a lot of harsh yelling and he could hear the roar of some motor. The brightest white light he had seen in years erupted into the night, illuminating the forest and effectively blinding him.
He turned back to the safety of his tree’s shadow, and he closed his eyes to clear the retinal burn from his eyes. Keeping his eyes closed, he listened to what the people were yelling at each other. He couldn’t hear much over the roar of the engine that was powering the bright flood lights that had just blinded him, but he did catch a little of what was going on.
“This is a nice little shelter,” he heard one male voice say.
That is not just a shelter asshole! It’s my home!
Having some vision restored he peeked around his tree into the bright light. He could clearly see that there were at least twenty people out there. There were several guys with long trench coats, holding steaming cups of what was probably coffee. He couldn’t be sure, but he was fairly certain that they were cops of some sort. There were little groups of them standing around yelling at each other over the loud machinery. He couldn’t make out anything specific but the expression on some of their faces was a mixture of mirth and exasperation.
He leaned back into the shadows and rested his head on the tree’s great trunk. This was his mom’s fault. It was the only possible explanation. She had finally found him. He didn’t know how but somebody somewhere had pointed them in his direction. Mom, why are you doing this to me? He knew that she was probably just worried about him and she had probably spent a lot of sleepless night crying over his ‘disappearance’. That thought was sobering.
He leaned out around his trunk and watched the unwelcome visitors. He saw people dressed in full body white plastic suits begin to come out of his burrow. He hadn’t seen these people before. What were they doing wearing Haz-mat suits out in the middle of the woods? They were each carrying suitcase looking things of various sizes and as they exited his burrow his spirits dropped. The suitcase things probably held his stuff, his clothes, and his coyote skin bag with all his precious boxes inside namely the red one that still held his left-over fish.