This story.

This story, read years and years ago, is really how our own story begins.

This story and a hoot owl.

But more on the owl later.

Without further ado . . . . the brilliant, Mr. Patrick McManus.

     Much as I enjoy roughing it in the mountains, I prefer my little pickup camper. It gives me a sense of freedom. It’s like having a little house on my back. If I don’t want to be where I am, I drive my house off toward where I am not. The camper also gives me a sense of security I don’t get from sleeping out on the hard, cold ground. It’s much easier not to believe in Sasquatches, for example, when you’re sleeping in a camper. I’ve noticed that my friend Retch Sweeney will scoff at the notion of Sasquatches while he’s in my camper, keep an open mind about them while sleeping in a tent, and put up a good argument for their existence while sleeping out under the stars.

     I do a lot of my camping in Sasquatch country. If it wanted to, I have no doubt that a Sasquatch could rip the door right off my camper. It could probably roll my camper and truck right off the side of a mountain. But I am prepared for just such a contingency. Any time I hear a serious ruckus outside at night, I yell “Red alert! Red alert!” Then I open the sliding window to the truck cab and my camping partner swings down out of the top bunk, shoots his legs through the sliding window and lands in the truck cab in one easy motion. He then starts up the truck and we drive off toward someplace we are not, leaving behind the source of the trouble, whether an irate moose, an angry grizzly, or a smelly Sasquatch. It’s nice.
     Sometimes when I plan to camp in one place for several days, I remove the camper from the truck and set it on a couple of stout sawhorses. I have a battery pack for the electrical system, so it’s easy to forget, especially coming out of a deep sleep, that the camper’s not on the truck. 
     One night Retch Sweeney and I were camping up on the St. Joe and were awakened in the middle of the night by a racket down the road from us. I got up and looked out the camper window.

     “A gang of bikers just rode in,” I said. “They’ve built a big fire and are setting up camp.”

     “Oh, great!” Retch said. “Just what we need—a gang of bikers camping down the road, and us out in the middle of nowhere!”

     “Maybe they won’t notice us,” I said. “They probably wouldn’t bother us anyway.”

     “Fat chance of that!”

     “Go back to sleep. They’ll probably be gone in the morning.”

     No sooner had we dozed off than we heard another disturbance outside the camper. “Red alert!” I shouted to Retch. “Red alert!” I jerked open the sliding window, and Retch in one easy motion swung down and shot himself right out onto the ground. We had forgotten that we’d set the camper on the sawhorses!

     “Whazzat?” Retch said. I grabbed a flashlight and shined it out the window so Retch could see better. Well, it was nothing more than a yearling bear cub that had climbed up on a tall black stump next to the camper, trying to reach a chest cooler we had secured to the roof. He was a cute little fellow and didn’t seem the least bit afraid.

     “Hey, Retch,” I called out. “Get a load of this cute little …”

     “SASQUATCH!” Retch screamed. “SASQUATCH!”

     “Hush!” I said. “It’s only a little bear trying to get at our cooler.”

     “But Retch had already streaked off, yelling back at me, “RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! SASQUATCH! SASQUATCH!”

     Just as I suspected, he had forgotten about the bikers. As he went by their camp, still yelling “SASQUATCH! SASQUATCH!” they leaped out of their sleeping bags and took off after him. He glanced back and saw that now he was being chased by not only what he imagined to be a Sasquatch but also a murderous gang of bikers he had rudely awakened.

     Retch had been doing a lot of running lately and was in terrific shape. He didn’t think he would have any trouble outrunning a gang of bikers. So he was pretty surprised when the bikers nearly caught up with him. He leaped off a bank, hurtled some brush, ran through a little creek, and spurted back up on to the road. The bikers stayed tight on his tail all the way. He could see he was going to have a hard time losing these fellows. As he said later, he thought the bikers must have had difficulty finding victims, to put all that effort into catching him. At last Retch tired and slowed to a trot, concluding that a little playful beating-up by the bikers was better than dying of exhaustion. But the bikers shot right on past him. As one hairy chap sprinted by, he shouted at Retch, “Just how big was it, bud?” Before Retch could reply, the biker disappeared into the night.

     In the meantime, I loaded the camper back on my truck, and took off after my camping partner.

     “What a night!” Retch gasped, once he was safe inside the truck. “First I nearly get nabbed by a Sasquatch and then a gang of bikers chase me two miles through the mountains!”

     “Yeah,” I said. “Actually, the ‘Sasquatch’ was only a little bear on a big tree stump. I thought you’d like to know.”

     Retch stared at me for a moment. “Well, the bikers were real!”

     “They were real, all right,” I said. “What I can’t understand is why they didn’t chase you on their bikes. Surely, they could pedal a lot faster than they could run!”

     “Pedal?” Retch said. “Pedal!”

     We drove on in thoughtful silence through the night, toward someplace we were not.

Excerpt From: Patrick F. McManus. “Real Ponies Don't Go Oink!