How? Part 2

I have been rereading the Twilight series recently and in the first book Bella discovers that Edward is a vampire and then she makes a decision - she doesn't care. She loves him and that is that.


I was forced to make the same decision with Mark - well, except for the vampire part.

I got my first inkling when we were first friends and we were driving somewhere in his pick-up truck. It was a little 2-door '87 Toyota truck and it definitely looked like it had seem some dirty days. The inside wasn't too bad though. As I sat gingerly on the seat I looked around and noticed a very strange -looking thing on the gear shaft. It was furry and it covered the top knobby part of the gear shaft. I had no clue what in the world I was looking at so of course, I asked.

"What is that thing right there?" I politely asked my friend Mark.

He glanced at me and smirked. "A scrotum."


Hmmm . . . the only scrotum I had heard of was in sex ed. Was he being serious and if he was, who's scrotum was this? Also, YUCK!


"So, a scrotum, huh?" I said in my most cool, grown-up, "nothing-fazes-me" voice.


"Yeah! It's from a caribou I killed when I went hunting in Alaska with my Dad and brothers." As he launched into the whole story, he didn't even notice me swallowing back the vomit that was suddenly in my throat.


Later that day when I got home, I called my friend Nicky and told her that while I thought Mark was cute and a nice enough guy, he was a little deranged because he obviously thought it was cool to put a caribou SCROTUM on his gear shaft. He was not my kind of guy. I liked a guy that could dance, make me laugh, and keep me safe from ticks and not use the word scrotum in polite company (mine).


Well, by the time Mark and I ended up dating, he had sold that truck and moved on to another and I forgot all about the scrotum incident. I know. How, you ask? Beats me. I think, I was blinded by loooove.


It all came rushing back to me one sunny day in June. Mark had asked me if I wanted to do something fun. I always love to do something fun so I said sure. He left me in his parent's house, visiting with his mom and when he came back inside a few minutes later, he told me we were all set. We hopped into his truck and drove out to my old stomping grounds - Reith Road. We were driving along, I was singing along with the radio and he was laughing at me, when he slowed down and pulled over. As he turned the truck off, he turned to me and asked "Do you want the shovel or the fishing pole?"


Come again? My mind raced. Are we going fishing? Are we burying something? What in the world? And then it came back to me. The scrotum. I should have known this boy would turn out weird!


I tried to casually say that I wasn't feeling well all of a sudden but Mark just laughed at me and pulled me out of the truck. I could see he wasn't going to fall for my line so I decided a shovel seemed like a good defensive weapon and I told him that's what I would carry. He smirked (that's his favorite expression by the way) and handed it to me while he hefted the fishing pole out of the back of his truck. Then he started walking down the road. This is not a popular road so no one passed by us and you could only hear country sounds - bugs, the river, dogs barking in the distance. It was so quiet that I was more than a little startled when I heard a rattling noise.


Yes. A rattling noise. Oddly enough, the same sound that rattlesnakes make when someone is irritating them. Like say, irritating them with a fishing pole. Mark began to call out to me "When it strikes, cut it's head off with the shovel!"


"You have GOT to be kidding me!" I yelled back.


He calmly walked around the snake and as it slithered away, I felt my knees buckle. I leaned on the shovel and laughed. "Boy, you had me going there! I thought you really wanted me to kill that snake!" Ha, Ha! If my laugh was a little hysterical he never said anything.


Mark waited patiently until I calmed down and then he calmly explained to me that we were hunting rattlesnakes today and the fishing pole was used to get the snakes to strike and the shovel was used to cut their heads off. We would then bury the heads so that wild creatures wouldn't eat them and die and we would keep the bodies. He said the meat was decent and the skins were pretty cool. The snakes would be stretched out on the road right now because it was warm and they liked that.


I gulped and since I was still blinded with that loooove thing, I stuttered out the words" o-okay" and asked for the fishing pole. I would try anything once and I didn't want him to think I was a wuss. I made a mental note to myself to not mention a word of this to my mom.


As we walked down the road looking for our next target, I kept giving myself pep talks in my head.

"You can do this Miriah. You're a lot bigger than a snake"

"Danger is your middle name."

I also prayed. "Please Lord, if you scare away all the snakes I will never try to run them over ever, ever again."

Mark suddenly grabbed my shirt. He had spotted one. It was at least 18 feet long and from where I stood, I could see the poison dripping from it's fangs. I didn't notice any bulges along it's body and I concluded that it was hungry and probably waiting for it's next meal right now. Me.


"Are you ready?" Mark's words jerked me back to the present and I decided to give it my best shot. Never let it be said that I didn't give it my all. I started tapping the end of that fishing pole for all I was worth.


"Babe - you need to get closer. You're still 10 feet away from the thing. We want it to coil up and strike at you, remember?"


Oh, yeah. STRIKE- AT- ME. That's right.


I inched closer, tapping, tap, tap, tapping. The snake felt my nervous vibrations and started to coil up and turn it's head to gaze upon me. It's beady little eyes were evil and I could hear it's hiss. The forked tongue started to flicker in and out as it figured out the best place to bite me.


Taaaaap. Taaaaap. "Here, snakey, snakey, snakey....


The next few seconds were a blur. This is what Mark told me happened.


The snake struck at me and kept coming for me. I apparently screamed, threw the fishing pole at it, and then sprinted for the truck. Since it was intent on me, (I think it could taste my fear) Mark had plenty of time to use the shovel for it's intended purpose and that was the end of that snake. He buried the head and then came to find me.


I was in the truck hyperventilating and chanting to myself "danger is my middle name, danger is my middle name, danger is..." Mark threw the dead snake's body into a cooler and got into the truck. "Wasn't that fun?" he asked me. When I didn't snap out of it, he gave me a kiss and that woke me up.


I looked at him and said "I do not like hunting."


He just laughed at me, again, and we drove back to his parent's house. I swore my second blood oath that night (again, I had to use spit because I didn't have any blood I was willing to spill).

I was never going hunting again.

Boy, I wish that blood oath would have worked.

I have more hunting stories to share...