My oldest sister's son and his brood got here around one o'clock this morning. They had three dogs with them. My brother's dogs went nuts. The visitor's dogs went nuts. It was a nutty night with lots and lots of barking and snarling and not necessarily the making of dog friends. That's why I don't keep pets, much less mouthy dogs that bark at their own shadow. We do live on the edge of a fair-sized swamp that includes the mucky flood plains of the Coharie River. The dogs sometime bark at real things that go bump in the night.
These coastal plains swamps are the "flyways" of the various land-bound animals including the black bears and other scary things. There are big boar raccoons that follow the swamps that are as big or bigger than a fair-sized hound, and will take on a pack of dogs all by themselves and win. Arrogant bastards who will generally slip away from a human confrontation, but not always. These coastal swamps were made famous in the Revolutionary War by General Marion, the Swamp Fox. He knew how to hold 'em, and to fold 'em, and most importantly, when to run away.
I'm not a river rat, but my younger brother is. He's leading a kayaking/canoe trip down one of the local rivers for the visiting nephews before the big Thanksgiving meal. I'm happy to have a legitimate excuse to get out of it. It's all too apparent to me that Mother Nature has been trying to off me from the bejinning. Why go asking for trouble?
I do know a little more about the swamps than the average fellow because of the longevity of my visits there. My family owns land on both sides of the river, and over the years I've had to move around through them. I'm not much of a fisherman and certainly not a duck hunter. I have fished for my supper because I like to eat fish, but I wouldn't give you a plugged nickel for a plate of duck. I would rather than starve, but I'm usually gonna find me something else to eat than waterfowl.
I've had more than one chance to learn to like eating goose. Once at a 12-course gourmet meal with a prize-winning chef at the helm. He was famous for cooking geese and ducks. Fortunately each of the twelve courses came with a plentiful supply of various wines, and the stuffing was delicious.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
