Lizard Tales

by Ron Shirley

  Well, you’d have thought I was about to shoot the governor and hang his wife. Pops started in on me like a bear eating bumblebees. So I did what any self-respecting hunter would’ve done: I started blowing that grunt call. See, it wasn’t that I didn’t hear Pops; I just didn’t care what he had to say. And at this point, anything was better than his yapping. I’d got no more than the first few grunts out when that ol’ eight-pointer broke out in a full run from almost the exact spot as the night before.

  Pops looked like the cat that ate the canary. We started scrambling around like two blind mice in a round room looking for a corner while trying to set up on this buck. I had Pops ease his smoke pole out the front window and gave him a stick with a fork on the end to prop it on. That deer started walking the same path as the evening before, so I whispered to Pops, “When he gets to the big stump, squeeze off on him. I’ll try to grunt to stop him. But let me know before you shoot, ’cause my head is right beside your barrel.”

  If you’ve ever heard a black-powder gun go off, you’ll know it’s louder than two trains having a head-on in a bell factory, and it shoots a huge flame from the end of the barrel and a big balloon of smoke that you have to wait to clear before you can see if you hit anything. To top it off, you get one shot and then you have to pull the rod from under the barrel, pour the powder down the barrel, stick a patch under the bullet, ram it down the barrel, pack it with the rod, and put a cap on the firing mechanism to shoot it again. Needless to say, it’s easier to herd blind chickens in the dark.

  So Pops had his gun out the window with the hammer pulled back. I was right beside him, getting ready to blow the grunt. Just before the buck got to the stump—Boom! The percussion of the blast blew out my left eardrum. I was dizzier than a drunk man in a house of mirrors. I couldn’t breathe ’cause of all the smoke, and there was Pops shaking me and screaming, “Reload my gun! Reload my gun!”

  Now it was pretty close to dark and he had forgotten the flashlight. And I was more confused than a milk cow on Astroturf as I fumbled through his bag for the powder and caps and bullets. He was all over me like a blind hog on corn, screaming at me—though I couldn’t hear but out of one ear. I tried to pack his gun and look for the deer, and just then I saw its head pop up and then go down again. I said, “Pops, he’s still moving.”

  So he yanked the gun from my hand—I’m not even sure the bullets were all the way down. Then Pops starts screaming, “Where’s he at? Where’s he at?”

  Now, I know Pops was more excited than a four-armed monkey with two peters, but at that point I personally would’ve rather been superglued to a chimpanzee with a blowtorch in a powder house. I said, “Pops, let me get out; I’ll stand up and shoot him for you.” I grabbed my binoculars and went to get out of the ground blind.

  Pops said, “Son, you got a better chance of putting socks on a rooster than getting out and scaring my deer off.”

  “You’re right, Pops. The ear-splitting boom of the gun, along with your whooping and hollering and romping around in here like a pair of wild dogs in a pizza parlor didn’t scare him a bit, but me stepping outside is sure to run him off.”

  So I leaned out the window with my binoculars and spotted that deer down in the creek. I had my head all the way out the window and was side by side with the end of the gun, trying to tell Pops where to look.

  “See the stump, Pops?”

  “Yeah.”

  “See the small tree three yards to the right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come down about five yards this side of the creek. But tell me before you’re gonna—”

  Boom! He set off another round.

  This time, not only was I gagging from the smoke like a fat baby on sour milk, but he had powder-burned the whole left side of my face! I started rolling around in the dirt quicker than a fat rat on a cheesecake, trying to put the burning out on my face. The way I was carrying on you’d have thought someone shot our Sunday mule. I jumped up looking like an ol’ beat dog someone had kept under a porch. I was about to tell Pops if brains were cotton he couldn’t Kotex a flea, but his eyes were bigger than a puppy dog with his first Milk-Bone—and they were full of tears.

  He grabbed me in a huge bear hug and said, “I got ’im son—no, we got ’im. You helped me get my first big buck!”

  Well, even though the whole ordeal was as much fun as a nosebleed, I smile like a possum eating persimmons every time I walk into his house and see that mount.

  You know, some days you’re the pigeon and some days you’re the statue. I guess that day, I was both.

  [Confused]

  1. He’s as confused as an Amish electrician.

  2. He was so confused he didn’t know whether to scratch his watch or wind his butt.

  3. He looked as confused as a monkey trying to do a math problem.

  4. He’s as confused as a cow on Astroturf.

  5. He’s as confused as a cross-eyed ’coon trying to cross the road.

  6. He’s more confused than a turtle on the center stripe.

  7. He’s as confused as a blind man at a silent movie.

  8. He’s as confused as a tailless cow during fly season.

  9. He’s as confused as a noseless rat at a cheese mill.

  10. He’s as baffled as Adam on Mother’s Day.

  [Tight]

  1. Tighter than a bull’s tail on fight night.

  2. Tighter than a frog’s butt—and that’s watertight.

  3. Tighter than a minister’s wife’s girdle at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast.

  4. Tighter than a mosquito’s butt in a nosedive.

  5. Tighter than socks on a rooster.

  6. Tighter than a camel’s butt in a sand storm.

  7. Tighter than Siamese ticks on a dead hound dog.

  [Nervous]

  1. Nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

  2. Nervous as a pit bull crapping thumbtacks on a balloon ride.

  3. Nervous as a dog crappin’ peach pits in a penthouse.

  4. Nervous as a sugar-dipped pony on an anthill.

  5. Nervous as a fat bee at a flyswatter convention.

  [Busy]

  1. Busier than a five-legged cat trying to cover crap on a marble floor.

  2. Busier than a stump full of fire ants in a flash flood.

  3. Busier than a one-armed paperhanger with crabs.

  4. Busier than a funeral-home fan in July.

  5. Busier than a borrowed mule.

  6. Busier than a dog with two peckers.

  7. Busier than a bumblebee in a bucket of tar.

  8. Busier than a horsefly in a Hoover.

  9. Busier than a blind dog at a cat pound.

  10. Busier than a banana salesman at a monkey whorehouse.

  11. He’s so busy, you’d think he was twins.

  27

  A Fisherman Is a Jerk on One End of the Line Waiting for a Jerk on the Other

  After my cousin Brian was married and finally settled down, he bought himself a nice little house in a subdivision outside Lizard Lick. When Brian bought the house he didn’t know that he was the only backwoods plowboy living in the neighborhood. He’d looked at the house on a weekday and then woke up on a Saturday and realized he was alone. Most of the folks there were Wall Street types, suit-and-tie guys. But it really didn’t matter to Brian or me.

  Well, it was pretty obvious that Brian stood out like a set of twenty-four-inch gold rims at a Puff Daddy concert. Of course, I made Larry the Cable Guy look like a debutante. I had this big, jacked-up truck with a deer painted on the hood and COUNTRY BOY CAN SURVIVE on the tailgate. I have always believed in respecting your heritage. I used to run around concerts screaming “Captain Redneck!”

  One Saturday, I asked Brian to take me fishing. He’d bought a brand-new boat, and I told him I’d found the perfect fishing hole at the Little River Reservoir, which was at the head of the Eno River near Durham, North Carolina. Brian was really proud of his fishing boat.
He paid $30,000 for the boat and there wasn’t a scratch on it. Now, to us this was akin to an eighty-foot Riviera yacht, and that boat cost just about as much as his house. See, down here you don’t judge a man by the car he’s driving or the house he lives in; you wanna know how a country boy is doing you just look at his boat and his barn. I showed up at Brian’s house and blew my truck’s horn. It played “Dixie,” and Brian’s neighbors probably thought it was the Dukes of Hazzard about to have a hoedown with a toe down pulling up.

  The Little River Reservoir has three natural hot springs that boiled up in it, so the fish grew year-round since it was warm water. I knew there were some huge fish in that hole—some so big they would make you cut your vision on your eyetooth just trying to look at them. I was more excited than a large-mouth bass at an earthworm reunion about fishing there. But the reason it was such a great place to fish is because nobody could get to it. There wasn’t a boat ramp, and you had to go through a swamp to get there. I thought Brian was going to kill me as we made our way to the reservoir. There were tree limbs and stumps tearing up the side of his boat the whole way. We looked like two swamp-fed billy goats by the time we got to the drop spot, and the boat looked like it had a custom paint job—only it was camo! Brian was hotter than a gasoline cat walking through hell with a kerosene tail.

  We finally got out there, and I wanted to fish at the head of the Eno River because that’s where the stripers were running. But the head of the river was located right next to this big hydroelectric dam. When the stripers are running, they run all the way to the dam and then they’re penned up. They have nowhere to go except on a hook! Now, that ain’t really fishing, but we eat what we catch and I figured I could fill in a month’s worth of freezer meat right there.

  A couple of days earlier, the engineers had opened the floodgates, so the water was really deep. When we pulled up to the dam, I knew Brian was worried. There were big signs everywhere that said Danger. Stay Away. But I figured that was for the guys with the little johnboats. We had us a genuine, bona fide bass boat with more horsepower than a Kentucky Derby turn four. Brian had his boat wide open as we were sitting right in front of the dam. We were practically sitting still because his boat didn’t have a chance against the strong currents. So here we are, full-throttle, and the boat is sitting still. Now, to an old redneck this was more fun than tying cats by the tail over a clothesline and spraying ’em with a water hose. The action was on and I knew the fish were about to be bountiful!

  “Bo, there are some big fish right here!” I told Brian.

  “Do you not see those signs?” Brian asked me. “We aren’t even supposed to be here!”

  I was fishing the whole time. I was throwing out rattletraps, and he was trying to stay up with the currents. I was having more fun than a Labrador retriever at a duck-calling contest. After a few minutes, Brian had seen enough and laid the law down.

  “You can fish, but you’re gonna do it from a life preserver,” Brian said. “So this is the time you decide whether you wanna sink or swim.”

  Now, I’m not partial to thirty-mile-an-hour water, especially if I’m the falling tree. So I reluctantly agreed to head back to the smoother side of the lake and we started trying to maneuver our way back to land. But then I saw a doe swimming across the water. Now, just about that time you could have backstroked it all the way to the front door. I figured I’d be the first guy on the block to catch a pet deer.

  “Bo, pull up beside him!” I told Brian.

  He looked at me and told me I was as crazy as a methadone house mouse. But Brian was smaller than me, so I rolled up on him like a fifty-foot section of sod and kindly convinced him that he’d rather be in hell with a broken back and jock itch than to not cooperate.

  Brian pulled the boat up closer to the deer. He thought I only wanted to look at it.

  “Bo, I want to catch him!” I told Brian. “I’m going to lasso him and put him in the boat.”

  Of course, I didn’t know how crazy a live deer gets. I collared a rope around the deer’s neck and it was madder than graffiti with a sore throat! I pulled the deer up into the boat, and I would have rather been an armless man watching porn than to go toe to toe with a live doe, though I didn’t quite know that just yet.

  The deer started chasing us around the boat, and we were running around like our hair was on fire and our tails were catching. Who knew a deer could be meaner than three-horned billy goats during mating season? The deer started kicking and was knocking holes all over Brian’s new boat. The deer was snapping fishing poles, tearing up the upholstery on the seats, and shattering glass windshields. The deer just went ballistic. You would rather have been duct-taped to a moose’s belly during rutting season. But I was happier than a leech at a blood bank because I had a pet deer. I just had to figure out how to lasso it again, but Brian wouldn’t stop scaring it. The deer was kicking like a bronco, and Brian was screaming like a thirteen-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert.

  Brian finally jumped on the bow of the boat and persuaded me to put the deer back in the water. Now, that presented a slight problem. It’s a whole lot easier letting the cat out of the bag than putting it back in. There are two things you can’t do in this world: survive an atomic blast and put toothpaste back in a tube. What’s a third thing you can’t do? You can’t corral a deer in a boat.

  Brian and I were sitting in a boat with a deer and were as confused as Confucius on crack. It was just like in the movies. Every time I took a step toward the deer, it started screaming again. How in the world were we going to get the deer out of the boat? Finally, I took a fishing rod and smacked the deer in the rear with it. The deer took off running right toward Brian, who was standing on the bow. The deer hit Brian so hard that when he finally woke up, his clothes were back in style. The deer flew to the left, and Brian flew to the right—right off the boat and into the water.

  Since we were sitting in only four feet of water, I thought there was just one thing to do—try to corral the deer again. But Brian was screaming at me to bring the boat to him, so needless to say, the deer got away.

  Since we hadn’t caught a fish all afternoon, I persuaded Brian to drive forty-five minutes away to put the boat in the ocean. By now the boat had substantial deer damage and Brian was tore up from the floor up. I told him that with some duct tape, superglue, Bondo, and paint, we could fix anything. But all he wanted was a twelve-pack and some aspirin, so we went by a store and grabbed that and a bottle of ’shine. We stopped and picked up my brother, Jason, and headed for the sound to finally do some serious fishing.

  Now, keep in mind that Brian’s boat didn’t have GPS—or any windshields after the deer attack—so we had to rely on compasses. And we’d never been fishing in the ocean, other than on charter trips.

  “Y’all just cruise around the inlet, and I’m going to go below and ease the pain and take a break,” Brian said.

  Now, I don’t think Brian was upset because his boat looked like a sixty-year-old hooker at a frat house. He had to go home and explain to his wife, Tracy, what happened, so he was going to ingest all the liquid courage he could find. Brian headed below and I took one look at Jason. With a grin on our faces bigger than pit-cooked pig, we pointed that baby due east to the Gulf Stream.

  See, I’d already been drinking all day, and I knew the redfish were about thirty miles offshore. The compass said we were headed east, so I figured all we had to do to get back was head west. It was really simple—even to a guy who had as much navigational sense as a dead mule.

  Brian was below with the music blaring, washing his troubles away. I always told him, don’t try to drown your troubles in liquor ’cause troubles know how to swim. I put that boat in full speed. We were hitting three- and four-foot whitecaps. It was tearing his boat to pieces. When Brian finally came up and stepped out of the cabin, he could only see water. There wasn’t any land in sight. He went ballistic. We didn’t have any safety equipment. The deer tore up the radio and there was water coming
in the sides of the boat from the holes the deer left.

  We were arguing with Brian about going back to shore. But then I saw a huge cloud come up next to the boat.

  “Did y’all see that?” I said. “Did y’all see that? What in the world was that?”

  The only fishing poles we had on the boat were bait casters for bass; we didn’t have any real ocean rods. I saw this big swirl come next to the boat again. Brian’s boat was twenty-three feet long and this animal was as big as the boat. It was the biggest animal I’d ever seen. Bo, I intended to land that critter like the old man in the sea and tie it off to the boat and make history.

  “Go! Go!” I yelled to Brian. “Get me next to that fish!”

  I had Gotcha plugs and I threw one out to set a hook in the critter. I snagged him! I threw another plug out and then another one. By the time I was finished, I’d snagged that critter with four poles. All the poles were bent over, bobbing up and down, and about to break in half. I ran into the cabin and found Brian’s daddy’s ocean rod. It had a huge treble hook on it. It looked like a collard green on Miracle-Gro.

  I threw out the treble hook and snagged the critter again. This time, the critter got hotter than an ol’ sitting hen setting eggs in a wool basket in the summertime. It turned around and rammed the front of the boat. The front of the boat literally stood up out of the water. I still don’t know how that boat didn’t flip.

  I finally saw what I’d snagged: a twenty-foot basking shark. They’re not meat-eaters, so I wasn’t worried. There wasn’t any way I was going to bring in a basking shark, but I didn’t know any better because I’d been drinking all day. I even grabbed the anchor and tried to snag the shark again to tie it to the boat. I figured the anchor would be a big enough hook to wear him down. Of course, I was never known for my massive intellect. But as I was fighting the shark, Brian was flipping like a dolphin at Sea World during a fish-feeding show. Then Brian did the unthinkable as I was wrestling this mammoth like Hulk Hogan on Ric Flair: he ran up to the front of the boat and cut all my lines.