The Great Flood
Well, looks like we will be shut in for a while, the only way to go through this snow is to tunnel through it. The good news is the storm has stopped, and it’s a beautiful sunny day. It’s morning time, and the temperature is already 40 degrees out. With days like this, maybe in a few days, we will be able to get out of our den again. We have plenty of food to eat, good protein of deer, possums several turkeys and possums, also a lot of native trout and a few rainbow trout. Plenty of greens with bacon to go in the greens, and porridge. Best of all we have a lot of flour, and sourdough starter to make sourdough bread. A plenty of honey from the 7 buckets of honey, we had collected, and berries for Sophia’s famous berry cobbler. Our den couldn’t be doing better, except we all still miss Oliver.
Being couped up, we will have to play many board games, to keep energized, and not wanting to go into early hibernation. If we were to go into hibernation too early, we would have an extended hibernation, which means we would lose more fat, and be skinnier come spring. Food is no problem so we can continue to fatten ourselves, for several more weeks, prior to go into hibernation. Speaking of hibernation, I can’t wait until we come out of hibernation, to see my brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews bear cubs.
We have now spent 4 days couped up inside and gouging ourselves putting on weight. I decided that I would venture outside. Over half of the snow has melted very quickly. I can hear the stream below it sounds like a huge river since the snow has melted so fast. I wanted to get out and venture a little, and walk down to the stream, oh I mean river. I have seen the stream flooded before but nothing like this.
I wonder back to the den, and everyone is now awake and Sophia is fixing sourdough bread. She has already made porridge, fried turkey eggs and bacon. We have a feast, and everyone wanted to take a little bear nap. I woke up to a loud creaking sound, at first, I had no idea what I was hearing, then I saw a small stream of water and it is getting larger, coming from the back of the den. There was so much melting snow, that the water, it is breaking our den apart. I get everyone awake, and we all ran outside, just prior to the den being ripped apart. All our belongings, and food is being washed down the mountain, and into the raging river below.
We are grateful for escaping with our lives. I grabbed the deer bag of marijuana, prior to escaping. We will need this now, while we try to relax, and figure out, what we could do. Everything is gone, I mean everything. Our whole lives washed away in a moment of time. We all roll us a cigar and are grateful of escaping the den, prior to it being ripped apart. As we are beginning to chill out. I think about Samuel and Angel, maybe we can share their den for a short period of time, until we can make it across the road, then we can use Lucy’s and James’s den, until next spring, then I can find a new den for Sophia and myself. Everyone is on board with this. But will Samuel and Angel, let us share their den?
We decided on our way to Angel’s, we need to do a hunting expedition, to help pay our way, if they were to let us stay. There is only a foot of snow now, we probably won’t get any small game, but hopefully we can get some deer and turkeys. We see the biggest buck I have ever seen, the rack was thick and very wide over 24 inches wide and had 18 points best I could tell. I wanted to kill this deer, but I told Lucy it was hers to kill. She said she wouldn’t let me down. It will not be as easy as, the 5 deer I killed, in the heavy snow. Lucy stalks and gets below this huge buck, and then she sprints towards it. The deer did what she wanted it to do. It ran to the steepest part of the mountain, and into the rock bluffs. With a few swipes of her paw the deer was dead.
We would get 2 more yearlings, and we ran into a flock of turkeys and harvested 6 turkeys. This should keep us in good graces with Angel, for a few days. We take all the game to Angel’s den; she was happy to see us. We didn’t see Samuel, I was were almost afraid to ask, but I did. Where is Samuel at, oh he went fishing down by the pond, said he was so bored, staying in their den all this time. We tell Angel about our den, and she immediately said y’all must stay with us, until you can get across the river and road to Lucy’s den. We also let her know about Oliver being killed. She was so sad for us, and gave all us a big bear hug. She said looks like y’all brought some food, I said it is the least we could do, for the hospitality. Angel said that’s a hell of a buck you have there. I told her Lucy had killed it; the meat was theirs but for some odd reason that I don’t understand, Lucy wants the antlers to hang in her den. I have never been able to eat antlers, so I don’t understand why, she has a strange addiction to wanting them.
Everyone decided to go to the pond, knowing with the weather, the likelihood that farmer Brown, would be out was very low. We grabbed the last 2 fishing poles, and all go to the pond. Samuel was happy to see us, and we let him know Angel had said we could stay, until we can get across the road to Lucy’s den. Samuel said yeah, this has been a crazy storm. He said we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted to. Samuel said with all us staying in the den, we needed to have a ton of fish. We love sitting here on the banks with fishing pole in hand. But let’s all get in the pond, and do fishing the old-fashioned bear way. Farmer Brown will restock in the spring. Let’s just catch every fish we can. The rich in protein will fatten us up well, and we will be ready for hibernation, here in a couple weeks. We were very happy getting in, and catching as many fish we could. We had to go back and get 10 more baskets. Oh, we going to be happy fat bears.
We take all the fish back to the den, and we decided to give Angel the night off cooking. Sophia, Lucy, James and myself fried up 2 baskets full of rainbow trout, and made 50 pounds of French fries. Sophia saw where the freezer was full of strawberries and rhubarb. She decided to try Angel’s recipe for her famous strawberry rhubarb pie. Angel had shared this recipe also with Sue. Smelling this had me missing Tom and Sue, and hoping they were doing ok. I just feel at ease they in a county where there is no hunting. Maybe later in my life I will move out closer to them, but Sophia and Lucy and James need me now though.
We hear snoring coming from the living room, boy could Samuel snore. Angel said yeah you should try sleeping with him. If I didn’t love him so much, I would move out. We tell Angel everything is ready, and to wake Samuel up and come have a feast. She wakes Samuel and they come in. I tell Samuel I heard him snoring, he denied being asleep and said he doesn’t snore. Angel just gives him that look, you know the look. After supper everyone was stuffed, and said it’s so nice of farmer Brown providing us with all the rainbow trout. We decide it was night time, and we all laid down for the night.
The next morning, I wanted to go visit Luna and Maverick, I was the first one awake and I headed down to their den. She was so happy seeing me, she gave me a little nose rub. I’m not sure that was good thing, I mean it felt sooo goooodddd, but it gives me false hopes. We are friends that all that was, I must believe that. I know she loves Maverick, and I would never do anything to hurt Luna. Maverick said it’s so great seeing you Ben, it’s been a while. I first tell of the loss of Oliver, Then I tell how I helped Tom and Sue, to a different county, where no bear hunting is allowed. I then tell him about our den getting ripped apart, so we will be staying with Samuel and Angel, until the river goes down. I then said Well farmer Brown’s Pond is all but fished out. They invited me to stay the rest of the day, and have super with them this evening. After dinner Maverick said its late, so I might as well spend the night. The next morning Luna was up early, and I had breakfast before heading back to Angels.
As I walked out the den, I noticed the sound down below. It didn’t sound like a raging river any more. I,m thinking we probably could make it across the creek now. Angel has breakfast fixed when I got back, and I said no, Luna had a good filling breakfast, before I left her den. There was sourdough bread so I said yes, he would partake in a loaf of sourdough bread. That when it hits me of the 6 buckets of honey that was left, was washed away from our den. I was very saddened. There is no honey to be found this time of the year.
After breakfast we headed on towards Lucy’s Den. The road is washed out badly, I don’t know if it would get fixed, before the end of kill season. We may be safe from hunters’ for rest of this season. Is that a blue bucket that I see, that was caught by some brush, could it be some of our honey. I walked down to it; it was still sealed, and we now have 5 gallons of honey. That made all of us happy.
We headed on up to Lucy den we are hoping it is still in good shape, and not ripped apart. It is in very good shape. Sophia said she would clean some, while Lucy and myself try to get some food. We are starting all over, kind of like Tom, except we have each other. Lucy said she noticed that the stream had washed several deep pools, and we could try to get some native trout. I was all in for that. We dive in the first pool; it was loaded with trout, 2 baskets full. We go down to the next pool, as we walking, I see something blue, several hundred yards down the stream, could it be more honey. I tell Lucy for her to fish, while I walk down to see what the blue was. It was another 5-gallon bucket of honey. We are now in good shape on honey. By the time I’m back to Lucy, she had filled the last 2 baskets with trout. We take them back to the den. Sophia was happy get the trout and honey. James and Sophia fixed supper for us, and we all had a big day. We now have a den that Lucy and Sophia can have their cubs in, later this winter.
The next morning, we hear something we wasn’t happy to hear. There were dogs running a bear, on top of the mountain. They must have come in, from the other side of the mountain. Now with less than 2 weeks of the season, would we be safe until the end of the season. My anxiety was beginning to get to me. I rolled me a Cigar to calm down, it’s stressful being the boar of the den. How did Oliver do it, and he never seemed to be stressed at all, after all those years? Will I ever be the boar bear that Oliver was? Will we survive rest of this Season?
Want more? Buzz this chapter!
Dale Thacker Aurthor 
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