Fossilization

While Out Hunting turtles

As I settled in for the tenth time the farmer’s dog ran past me into Friday sinking down to the white star on his chest. Half the dogs in the world have that white star, definitely the best half. Barking twice the dog ducked his head under mud. I shifted again, choking on a chunk of fruit that had finally escaped the straw. I was just like the dog airless and moving down. I thought he had been a good dog, one of the best. I took another sip. 

A minute later I finished drawing the left hoof of the cow sleeping under the tree on the other side of the gate. I had put the pencil behind my ear to shift when the dog appeared up by my gate dropping a terrifying bloated toad beside the post and moving on to the cow streaking mud all over the white spots as he pushed him up and awake. He is a survivor of the bog life. I grabbed the pencil, erase the turtle I drew staring at the cow and draw a dog there.

My sister is a survivor of the bog life as well, shoulders wide enough to carry five average sized snakes comfortably. Right then they were propping up the tail end of some portable tracking antenna, folded out at the joints to look like a lightning rod coming from my sister’s neck.

If it hadn’t rained I would have spent all day in Friday Bog being a total badass. I would have found a turtle near the bar in the grass, shoving my hand blindly underwater to locate it. Most likely it would be a snapper and I would lose my left pinky to it, but I would keep all of my necessary fingers. I would probably make a joke about snappers eating pinkies from the fridge, by that I would allude to the pink baby rats they feed to the snakes. I think they also feed them to Howard sometimes. I would toss the snapper on its back and, like all snappers do, it would become docile while Nat notched a few codes into the side of shell as a label and I stuck the big red gum I was chewing to the bottom side of his shell as my own form of identification.