Gold & Critters

The power of the mention of a gold discovery brings to mind the time we were on one of our early camping and prospecting trips to Lynx Creek, just out of Prescott,Arizona. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon and the creek was lined with people enjoing themselves and panning along the banks and small pools of water. The soothing buzz of insects, chirp of birds, and clinking of tools against bedrock, was suddenly broken by an excited, "Gold, I found nuggets"!
Heads turned up creek, and a few folks actually grabbed up their tools and headed for the "discovery". Of course, the "rush" was short lived, when the "prospector" turned out to be Jim, our 2 -1/2 foot tall, chubby, little three year old! He had just panned his first little pieces of gold and just had to let the world know about it! The rest of the afternoon and well into evening around the campfire was filled with joy and laughter as the story was told and retold, how little Jim had created such a stir along the creek!
The excitement of our outing didn't end there. After supper and story-telling around the fire, we all turned in for a restfull nights sleep. All was still until 2:00 in the morning, when I was awakened by this "sniff, sniff, sniff" sound. I slowly turned over and was suddenly eyeball to eyeball with the biggest Mamma Skunk I'd ever seen!
My movement caused her to back out of my tent and go on sniffing around the campfire area. I, in turn, woke everyone up as quitely as I could and we all retreated to the "safety" of our truck! We spent about an hour observing this old skunk checking out our camp area before becoming bored and meandering off, allowing us to return to bed.
It seems we had left some potatoes baking in the coals of the fire, to have for breakfast. The smell of them cooking probably got the skunk's attention. How she managed to not spray us all remains a mystery!!
Read more true family stories that have humor at: http://www.cynthiamargaret.com/cm_my_blogs_adventure.php

Comments

  1. Funny, I never seemed to learn my lesson... When I was in junior high, at Boy Scout Camp, my friend and I left our tent open. Again, at about 2 a.m. I woke to find a skunk sitting on my chest! I just froze and looked over to my friend to whisper, "Michael, there's a skunk on me"... We thought it was the funniest thing. That was, of course, AFTER the little guy had left. I thought for sure I'd be taking a tomato juice bath!

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  2. ive had the same problem with critters at lynx creek. My uncle and i were camping, socks were wet, so i hung them up on a branch close to the ground. Around 3 in the morning, my uncle whispers to me that my sock is missing. So i look up and i see a ring tailed cat going through all our stuff. It sat around and played with our things for about 45 minutes, and we were just watching it.

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  3. Thanks for sharing your story! We will be posting more "Critter" stories soon.

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  4. Very cute. Generally a skunk won't even consider spraying unless it feels very threatened. Clearly you felt way more nervous than it did. They're wondeful critters, eh? :)

    Thanks for your visit to my blog, and for pointing out this story.. much appreciated.

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