Bob Peters
Well-known member
Sunday I caught a wild hare(in the idiomatic sense), and decided I needed to get out in the boonies. So I hitched up the old boat and drove way out in the sticks. I know a little farm pond that's been known to hold a fish or two. There's nothing wrong with pleasure boaters, but sometimes it's nice have a lake to yourself, and even on a weekend there wasn't another boat at the ramp. The bass were biting, the birds were singing, and I was as happy as a kid in a candy store. I was 1,000 miles from nowhere and loving life. In Florida they often refer to cattails as "flat grass" as opposed to "round grass" or buggy whips. Just a little back story concerning the title. This lake has a lot of boggy shoreline consisting of floating cattails. I was going down the bog edge, flipping a jig n' craw with my trusty Shimano reel. The breeze had died, the air was heavy and still, such a quiet evening. With a suddenness and intensity that I never could have expected there was violent shaking in a large area of cattails very close to me. Somewhere something deep in my caveman brain caused me to completely freeze and stare. Fully expecting a whopper buck to jump up and away after winding me, I looked on in awe. Then I heard a growling and whoofing that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. It sounded like a cross between bigfoot and a werewolf. Then a series of whimpers and whines. One more shake, a last pathetic whimper, followed by deafening silence. I had been thinking of door knocking this fall, to see if there's any roosters about. After this encounter, I'm not sure if it's the hell hound, devil dog, moth man, or swamp ape living in those lonely and desolate bogs, but I'm not looking to find out. There's death in the flat grass there.
