A Blankie for Baby

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Little piece of my spouse’s history here: except for Steve, Sam’s family doesn’t know he’s a werewolf.  In fact, if you’d have asked them about such things, I have no doubts they would have called the authorities and had you removed from their presence as a certified nut.  So, why is Sam a werewolf?  He has his theories but he’s not sure.

Grandpa Zu says there’s a number of ways for it happen, so Sam’s theories are probably just as good as anything else.  Anyway, on with the tale:

Sam and his brother spent a lot of time in boarding schools when they were young, mostly in Europe.  One day when he was thirteen years old, his nature class went on a camping trip, and he wandered off from the group and got lost.  After his initial fear when he couldn’t find his way back to camp, he found a stream and followed it for a while, mainly because that’s what he thought he was supposed to do.

It got late in the afternoon, and he got tired, so he found himself a nice comfy place covered in pine needles beside a big fir tree and sat down to rest.  He fell asleep and when he woke up, night had fallen and it was almost pitch black.  The sky was moonless, and the only light was from the stars peeking through the trees.  He sat there for a while, listening to all the night sounds you hear when you’re in the outdoor-woods all by your lonesome, scaring the shit out of himself with dire thoughts of hungry bears and other such wild fauna, fervently wishing he was back in his nice cushy bed at school.

Finally, he decided he needed to make a fire.  Not because it was cold, it was early September, and the weather was nice – cool nights but not cold - but because he figured to keep off those hungry, boy-eating predators he imagined were sniffing eagerly around for his tender ass, and besides, he thought searchers would be able see his fire and find him quicker.

 So he gathered sticks and laid them by the side of the stream and being the lucky duck he was, had matches and so didn’t have to try to use his non-existent skills at fire-making to get one going. 

He sat by that fire for two days waiting for rescue, drinking from the stream - gingerly because he didn’t want to swallow a bug or, he said, inadvertently take in any fish shit - watching fish swim by that he couldn’t catch.  Not that he didn’t try, but at that time he was lousy at catching fish with a pole, let alone with the stick he was using to try to spear them, and when that didn’t work, to try and bash their brains out – which also didn’t work.  He has since improved. 

He got hungrier and hungrier, and the only other thing that might possibly be food were some kind of odd looking nuts lying around on the ground.  He didn’t recognize them and was, at first, afraid to try them out.

On the third day, still waiting on rescuers to show up, and after continuing to fail to catch any fish, he was trying to decide whether to try his luck farther down the stream or stay put.  His stomach was empty and rumbling, and he felt light-headed.  He had to eat something and eat it soon.  By then, he was ready to eat the bark off the trees and follow that up with pine needles and a side of grass for desserts.  He was even thinking about catching some of the bugs crawling around and roasting them in his fire.  But, he figured he’d try the nuts first, since he simply couldn’t abide the thought of eating bugs.

Uh-huh.  He used to be fastidious.  Not so much after going through survival training.  ‘Nother story.

He found a couple of rocks, cracked open a nut, popped it into his mouth and determined it was just about the nastiest thing he’d ever tasted in his life.  Being extremely hungry though, he finished that one and ate another, managing to keep them down, and, hallelujah! they didn’t make him sick.  He forced himself to keep eating.  The taste didn’t get much better but he still figured it was better than eating bugs.  He scarfed down a belly full, drank more water from the stream, burped, and decided he might as well stay where he was until somebody showed up.  At least there was something to eat and plenty of sticks for his fire.