Tuna
Following an active night of the dog barking at some unknown entity and the cat knocking items off the headboard onto my head to sink his claws into the window shade for really no reason at all...
Back out in the kitchen that morning prepping plates of eggs and sausage and toast before some math drills and two light nosebleeds for Yali and then back to the creek...
Ten months later... it's our sixth year at Castlewood... no one else there down on the rocky creek bed... choked up with woodland debris... whistle of a train south through the trees... kids get splashing and laughing... speaking in that yelling way they do sometimes to compensate for their mutual hearing loss... “HA HA HA HA HA HA!”
After about twenty minutes of splash-and-play for the kids... notice what looks like a small dead snake sprawled amongst the roots on the bank... its white belly sunny-side-up on the mud... several minutes later however... we realize this snake has only been pretending... at some point he apparently found opportunity for escape without detection and several minutes later we see him coiled around a root at the top of the high bank... statue-still... this danger noodle was so scared of the unnecessarily loud cartoons that I brought to his creek... that he threw himself upside down and backwards on the mud to avoid a potential encounter... Yali is then suddenly inspired to fling chunks of rock at the bank to see what this snake does... “I GOT THE POWER!” he sings loudly as Patience cheers him on with “AGAIN! AGAIN! GO GO! A BIGGER CLUNK!”... the snake has not moved... “HE MAD!” Yali laugh-yells... // “Maybe it's because you were throwing rocks at it”... // “I SHOULD KEEP THROWING ROCKS AT IT??” // “No... stop throwing rocks at the snake” // Yali pauses for a lengthy time of observation wondering if he should poke at it with a stick to try to move it... “MOM... IF WE GET BIT CAN WE STILL GET ICE CREAM?” they want to know... // “Guys... that thing is so terrified of you it's actually pretending to be a stick until you go away... it's not going to bite you”... // after some more observation and deliberation while I'm collecting tool-marked rocks on the opposite bank... Patience calls to me... “WE'VE DECIDED TO NAME HIM 'TUNA'!”
Some time later they leave the spring-cold water ready for mini McFlurries on the drive home wrapped in beach towels...
...and "Tuna" seeks psychological counseling for his traumatic experience at the creek that morning...