There are Things in the Woods

...and I don't mean squirrels.

There Are Things In the Woods

by Thomas Pluck

There are things in the woods.

And I don’t mean squirrels.

Normally when you’re in the woods you can blame most unusual sounds on squirrels and chipmunks. Fast little buggers who like to skitter through the understory and make a ruckus much louder than their size would dictate, before disappearing behind a tree.

Where they probably emit a squirrel snicker into their little rodent paws while you look over your shoulder for whatever the hell that was.

When it’s not a squirrel, it’s a leaf.

What’s that weird shape with the color all wrong? A rare insect? A beautiful bird I’ve never seen before? A gobbet of decaying flesh?

No, it’s a leaf. Beautiful on its own, illuminated by a beam of sunlight through the trees, but not a jeweled beetle or a brightly plumed tanager or even a bushtit.

That’s my favorite bird name, which is saying a lot, because birds get the best names, like yellow-bellied sapsucker. See? Plus, bushtit has both bush and tit in it, which is enough to make my inner twelve-year-old snicker like a red-billed oxpecker any time it’s mentioned. 

So, unexplained noises and sights in the woods, when they are too big to pass off as a squirrel or a leaf, are usually a bear. A black bear. Capable of climbing trees, standing on two legs, and scaring the hell out of people, because it is a bear.

Not everyone has the switch in their spine that flips to run when they see a snake, or a spider. But as apes who gave up swinging in the trees for walking on two legs a couple hundred thousand years ago, we never got over the terror caused by a big four-legged critter who thinks we taste like a honey-baked ham. And we shouldn’t. Black bears kill people every year, despite their peaceful reputation, which is only pacific in comparison to their enormous, murderous cousins, the grizzly bear.

“Peaceful compared to a grizzly bear” is a big ol’ caveat, in my opinion.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t garden-variety fools who won’t try to feed Yogi a granola bar. Some people also jump out of perfectly good airplanes. Or jump off bridges with rubber bands tied to their ankles. And eat wild mushrooms they picked, without identifying them with an expert.

I am not one of those people. I don’t skydive, I don’t feed the bears, and I don’t believe in Bigfoot, ghosts, or God, for that matter. Anything I haven’t seen.

Believers in the supernatural often ask me if I’ve ever seen a quark, the building blocks of the universe. (They used to say “atom” until electron microscopes came around, now they say “quark.”) And no, nobody’s seen a quark. But the science people show their work. The ghost people haven’t yet. And the God people never have. To paraphrase George Carlin, If you want me to believe there’s a man in the sky who loves me, but needs money, you’re gonna have to show your work.

But anyway, things in the woods. 

If you’re in the woods, and you hear a noise or see something odd, or feel afraid, nearly a hundred percent of the time it’s either a leaf, a bear, or a squirrel.

Except when it isn’t.

It’s those times that haunt you.

When you can’t explain it.

Not to yourself, much less someone else. 

You can’t explain it, but you can tell it.