14.3.06
Hello kiddie-winkies...it's been a while since I had an amusing story to share. Ready?So this past weekend I drove up to Napa Valley with my girlfriend to see my father. It was a pretty gnarly sky coming home, meaning that it looked threatening all across the central California valley with crazy big clouds all over the place with bright patches of blue sky in between. No real rain the whole way, it seemed we missed all the storms by six hours or so.
And it's the beginning of Spring, which means the grass was super Hobbit green and the cherry orchards were in bloom. So, seeing how we just bought a new camera, we pulled off the road to go take some pictures in one of the many cherry orchards off the 5.
Yeah yeah yeah, we saw the "no trespassing" sign on the way to one of the orchards, but really, who the freak is out in the middle of California?
We pulled off the road about a mile from the 5 and got out. Quiet, windy, gorgeous. To our left was a big orchard, in full bloom. The light pink petals had fallen to the ground, blanketing the brown dirt and the trees above us in tiny flowers. To the right was the biggest, greenest field I'd ever seen (and I grew up on a golf course.) Long springtime grass blowing in the wind. If ever there was a field to frolic in, it was this one.
So we walked in the trees a bit, took some pictures (I love dating a photographer) and then my inner-velociraptor took over and I went jumping through the grass. The ground was soft from rain and it was easy on my knee that I had just had surgury on last month. I ran pretty far out into the field, giggling at how silly it made me feel. My girlfriend was taking pictures of this rare moment of care-free-ness. Standing out in the middle of the field, I saw these big, deep impressions in the grass, as if a... very...large...animal.... had been laying there not too long ago.
I paused and thought of my lame right leg; an injured animal in the wild. Then I thought, "What the hell could possibly live way the freak out here?" Then I realized that humans are soft, pink and an easy target for anything with big teeth and claws.
It was about that time that we saw a big white Dodge Ram coming down the road with about six pitbulls in the back of it. It was moving slow enough that the alpha dog, a white special breed pitbull, could stand on the hood to get a clear view of the idiots in the field. Obviously these people were coming to a) have a word with the trespassers, b) make sure we were okay or c) possibly shoot us in the face and let their dogs eat us.
We started walking back to the car, and the man in the driver's seat, wearing all camoflauge from head to toe with three full grown dogs and three puppies in the back, smiled back and called out as I smiled my dopiest "I'm sorry" smile, "You two don't have a clue what you're doing, do you?"
That wasn't quite the introduction I had expected. Something more along the lines of, "you two know you're on private property, right?" was what I had been expecting. So naturally, my response was, "Have a clue...about what?"
We reached the truck and he said, "You know, I wouldn't let my DOGS run in that grass."
"Oh yeah? Why?"
"Aside from the cougars that rip apart our sheep every Springtime, we killed 16 rattlesnakes last week and we're out here today shooting wild boars."
Now, no one ever wants to admit that they're naive, ignorant, or just plain dumb, but at that moment, I'd never felt like "a cityslicker" in my entire life. While I have to argue the rattlesnake bit (it was freezing ass cold and only the end of Winter) having grown up around them, I have to admit (sheepishly) that I had NO IDEA that a mountain lion (HELLO??? It's a MOUNTAIN lion - we were in a field at sea level, ha ha ha) could possibly be out there. As for wild boars, aren't those the little monsters on that TV show LOST? What the hell is a "wild boar" anyway?
Well, my girlfriend, who's from Hawaii, later explained that wild boars are about 350 pounds, charge when they're scared and have huge teeth. Then she mentioned the movie "Hannibal." The whole time I was thinking of the damn boar from "The Lion King" and how that thing sang cute songs and couldn't possibly be harmful (unless it couldn't harmonize. I spent the next ten miles imagining me in the middle of that field singing "Hakuna Mattata with a wild boar...)
We chatted a while with the couple, who showed us their hunting guns, explained that packs of coyotes roam in the orchard and let us play with their puppies before we thanked them for pointing out that we weren't being very intelligent. I couldn't help but stare at the man in the driver's seat, all done up in his camoflauge and think, "I have a pussy PR deskjob and live in a city surrounded by concrete." When I think of 'guns' I think of the crack dealers outside my apartment in Los Feliz. This guy is like a burly hunter man straight out of Northern Exposure. (Not the Sasha and Digweek CD, but the TV show about the hunter flannel guys in Alaska. See?!?!?!?)
I spent the next few hours in the car heading South staring at passing green, flat fields and thinking of how harmless they looked and how Sally Fields was at any moment going to pop up and sing, "The Hills are Alive With the Sound of Music." Instead, I'd shake Dacia out of her car-trance and say "DANGER! GREEN FIELD!! DANGER!!!"
Stupid nature.
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