My last vacation trip was to the planet Mars
I can't help but chuckle when I hear all of the hoopla here of late about the prospects of a manned space flight to the planet Mars. Pleeeeeease! That is so much "old" news. I have been to the planet Mars, and I have returned with stories to tell you about that adventure.
At this point in my story, it is probably oh so obvious that I am pulling your leg. The story that I have to tell is about my camping trip in west Texas. My destination was the Chihuahuan Desert — an area so unlike central Oklahoma. The desert environment is chock full of things that are bound and determined to either poke you or bite you or sting you. To my mind's eye, it is an alien environment; let's pretend that it's not unlike a visit to the planet Mars.
Being the cheapskate that
I am, I opted to camp out. My shelter for the night was a cot that was underneath a mosquito net that was under a tarp that was stretched over a clothesline rope that was stretched between two trees. It was when I abruptly awoke from a sound sleep at 2 a.m. that I realized that my sleeping arrangements of choice might have been ill-advised. My alarm clock that early morning hour was animal footfalls in the dry leaves surrounding my camp. My sleeping shelter offered scant protection from a possible bear attack. Fortunately, it was no bear. There was a slight odor emanating from the beast, and I shockingly surmised that my nighttime interloper was a skunk. Yikes! Well, no harm done.
I assumed that if I remained calm and did not overreact, the little stink pot would amble off and away.
Nope!
The footfalls got closer and closer.
Eventually, the sound of the skunk's steps indicated that the animal was up under the tarp and was right alongside my sleeping cot.
Again: I was determined to wait it out.
That was about when some weighty thing pressed against the mosquito net near my face, and I felt the pressure of an animal's tiny forefeet on the side of my face. Being cheek-to-jowl with a skunk was not for what I had bargained.
Never having been in such a perilous situation as that, I was somewhat unsure about how to proceed. I imagined, however, that if I did not take some sort of action, things might progress to the point where I would have a skunk doing a balancing act on my nose.
I decided to let loose a somewhat-subdued grunt.
The result was that the skunk went silent and quit moving.
Oh, no! Did this mean that I was about to be walloped alongside the head with a foul dose of stink?
Such was not the case. Thank goodness! The skunk proceeded to drop back down to all fours, and it slowly ambled off.
Needless to say, on my subsequent visits to the planet Mars (aka the Chihuahuan Desert), I got a tad bit smarter and convinced myself to lay out the extra coin in order to purchase a gossamerwalled tent with zip-closed entry doors.
The thing is this: I can only hope that a night-prowling bear does not amble into camp. Those oh-so-thin fabric tent walls will not do much to deter something like a bear that would desire to do the cheek-to-jowl thing with my face.
Such is the ordeal of camping on planet Mars.