Mississippi River Trip: Encounter IV

“What was that?”

I’d heard it this time, a soft crunch of gravel and dirt underfoot.  “Probably an elk.”

“How do you know?” Larisa asked.  “Maybe it’s something else.”

“Well, it sounded big and heavy.  We’re in National Forest, and we saw an elk not thirty minutes ago when we were walking.  Other than those facts, it’s all conjecture.  I guess it could be a raccoon.”

“It sounded like a big dog,” she replied.  “Big.”

“Unless it’s a dog the size of a small horse it’s probably an elk.  I’ll take a look.”  There followed the usual crawling from the tent, shining the flashlight drill that has come to permeate this trip.  You readers out there only get the good stories, but the phrase “What was that?” is an almost nightly experience.  I didn’t see anything around the camp and went back to bed.

“It was sniffing around the tent.  It was a dog, a big dog.”

“Well, I guess it’s technically possible that a Great Dane with growth hormone problems is out there, somewhere, stalking us.  But I’m going with ‘elk’ for now.”

"I'm telling you, it was a dog.  I can feel it."

Feeling it or not, the mystery animal wandered off and Larisa rolled over, muttering to herself that I didn't take her safety seriously.  Eventually she slept, but the next morning found Larisa carefully searching around the tent. 

“Look!  I told you it’s a dog!”

She was pointing to four distinct impressions on the ground, roughly equidistant from each other.  I knelt down are examined them carefully.  It was spooky.  They almost seemed to form a square.  I looked up at Larisa gravely and asked, “Do you know that this looks like to me?”

She swallowed, fearfully I thought, and said quietly, “No.”

“Well, either a Bigfoot left us a message last night, or you have managed to find the ‘tracks’ left by my camp chair.  Good spot.  I think it was a Bigfoot.  Let me go to town and get some plaster to take a cast.”

For some reason this earned me a swat on the back of the head.

“What you did manage to miss were these.”  I pointed a few feet beyond the chair impression to a neat row of elk tracks.  “I guess it’s possible that a big dog with growth problems put on a pair of elk hooves last night. . .”

At least it wasn't a mutant dog Bigfoot creature, I guess.