Intruders
I jolted awake. Cold sweat pricked my brow. I lay motionless, straining my ears into the darkness. A protracted second in inky blackness passed. Then, unmistakably, raspy breathing pierced the moonless night. What nocturnal savage was out there?
My heartbeat reverberated in my ears as my groggy brain kicked into survival mode, its prehistoric instincts urging me to bolt for the nearest tree. But I lay stone-still, my limbs immobilized as if made of petrified wood, and tried to fathom the creatures, wild boars, mere inches from our tiny tent.
I weighed possibilities. The pot beside me: should I beat on it to scare them away? No, I decided, I might be between them and their flight. Being gored by a rampaging wild boar was not my idea of an amusing postcard home.
Surrounded by surly marauders, circling like hungry land-sharks, I lay marooned inside a blue island of paper-thin fabric. The cayenne pepper spray in my handlebar bag! I snatched it, and clutched the metal canister to my chest like a Wild West preacher hugging a bible that contained a pistol. "Hah!" I thought, as I held my finger to the trigger. "And I had almost left this at home!"
About to congratulate myself on finally finding a use for the pepper spray, I froze. Prior to retiring, I had leaned my bike against a tree ten feet from our tent and set a plastic bag containing food scraps on its seat to keep them from mice's reach. A snort came from the direction of my bicycle. Wee rodents were now the least of my concerns.
My bike tumbled unceremoniously to the ground, and a gleeful snuffle erupted from the frenzied oinkers. As they noisily gobbled the bag's contents, I fretfully remembered the oranges I had stashed beneath our tent vestibule, and was powerless to stop the thought: Boars eat anything, don't they? Eternity passed as I listened to their devilish chortles, certain it was only a matter of moments before they ripped through the tent's insignificant nylon and devoured me.
Since I had the time, I prayed to Miss Piggy, begging her forgiveness for every slice of bacon I had ever consumed, for every morsel of ham that had brushed past my heathen lips, for every pork chop that had had the misfortune to grace my plate.
At long last, prayers apparently answered, swine snortles dwindled into the distance. Exhausted from the panic, from the terror, from the day's hard ride, I slid into fitful sleep ... and dreamed of drooling, ballroom-gowned, mascara-eyed, flying pigs -- citrus fruit crammed in their gaping jowls.
More than just a bike ride...
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