Peggy Strickland

***A Georgia Dragon Hunt, a true story, was originally published in the 1992 edition of Georgia Sportsman Magazine.

Editors there speculated upon this story being exemplary of reasons why mother/son hunts are a rarity.......

 

 

“Aw, come on, Mother,” Heath begged.  “I’m sorry I said you were a pitiful hunter.  I was just teasin’.  Let’s go, okay?”

He looked at me with big blue/gray eyes under wrinkled blond brows, lower lip puckered just a little, and I was hooked, as he knew I would be.  I couldn’t be angry with him for telling the truth.  I am too noisy in the woods.  Stalking any kind of animal calls for stealth, as any Indian or 12-year-old boy knows.

“If you’d let me take the rifle by myself, you wouldn’t have to go,” Heath continued.
“You know better, rascal,” I said.  But it was a perfect, fall afternoon, and I could use a lazy couple of hours traipsing the woods.  I started for the door, pulling an old stocking cap over my freshly styled hair.  “Get your .22.  Maybe you can bring home squirrel for supper.”

The fields near our house were freshly plowed and littered with dried corn husks that crackled underfoot.  Uneven furrows were strewn with clumps of sandspurs that tugged at the legs of our jeans.  We crossed several drooping barbed-wire fences and carefully avoided the strands of electric fencing that served as a barrier for the placid cows grazing nearby.  They were not interested, barely looking up as we occasionally spoke, never breaking the rhythm of their slow and steady chewing.

The sound of our hushed voices was accompanied by the cawing of some crows in the trees not far away, and once in a while the barking of a distant squirrel.  A lone buzzard circled lazily overhead, but apparently saw nothing appetizing and slowly moved over to another pasture out of sight.

At the far edge of the field, where the woods began, the fence was bent down in places, by age and by the weight of years of bovine bodies straining to reach the tender spring greenery always just out of reach.  Now a tangle of brown and patches of drab green, the brittle branches held no appeal for the browsing animals.

We awkwardly climbed across the wire, picking our way over and under limbs and grasping vines, grateful for our tough denim and heavy shirts as we struggled through the underbrush.  A little way past the fence row, the undergrowth thinned out with a carpet of leaves and straw covering the ground between the trees.  As we walked deeper into the woods, the thick canopy of pines, oaks, bay trees and fox grape vines obscured any view of the fields and pastures behind, with more heavily forested land ahead.

We walked on in the deepening silence of the woods; Heath cautioning me to be quiet as we neared a spot he thought looked good for squirrels.  We found a dry, level clearing and sat down to wait.  The rustling of our down-filled vests when we moved sounded unnaturally loud in the total quiet.

This, to me, was the best part – the breeze adding its whispering to ours, being with my son with no telephones or stereos to interfere and a sense of peace and contentment.  We sat very still, listening, and watching the high tree limbs for any movement.  It was so very quiet.

Gradually, we became aware of a faint sound in the distance.  We could not tell what it was, and halfway ignored it, trying to shut out anything but possible squirrel movement.  Still, the soft, rhythmic noise kept intruding, becoming a little louder and possibly a little closer.

“Heath,” I whispered, “What do you think that is?”

“Shh!” was the only reply.

We sat still for a few minutes more, my thoughts wandering again to the strange noise.

“It could be a pump of some kind, but that wouldn’t be sounding closer,” I continued in a very soft voice.  This time I got a dark look.

“Huge earth moving machinery might sound like that, but they wouldn’t be moving through the trees.”  I rushed on before he had time to shush me again.  “Logging equipment?  But, I don’t hear any trees falling.  An animal?  Nah, far too big.”

With a dramatic sigh, Heath shifted his attention to the treetops in the distance.

“Okay, I’m quiet,” I said, and forced my concentration to the limbs above.

That distant echo was the only sound for some minutes.  Then Heath looked sideways at me and whispered, “Nothing to hurt me, huh?”

I had always assured Heath that there was nothing in our South Georgia woods to hurt him as long as he was careful to look out for snakes, and leave alone any small, wild animals he might encounter.  He accepted this as true until a huge Bengal tiger was discovered not long ago and killed near Interstate 75, just a few miles from our home.  It had possibly been living in the woods for a while, for no circus or wild animal show had been through for months.  Shortly afterward a black bear was hit by a truck on that same highway.  Heath’s quizzical response, upon hearing of those beasts had also been, “So, nothing to hurt me, huh?”

At any rate we now gave free reign to our imaginings, but just for fun, because we really were not afraid.  We kept watching and listening for squirrels, throwing in a guess now and then as to what the noise might be.  The noise, by the way, kept getting closer – and louder.

“Mother, what if that’s a very big animal,” Heath whispered, a little frantically, “with its head in the treetops?”  The closer the noise got, the more it sound big and tall!  “I know,” he said, and laughed somewhat nervously.  “It’s a positively huge, fire-breathing dragon!  If it is very big, this .22 won’t do much good.”

“There is no such animal!” I declared.  “The odds wouldn’t allow for another unusual animal around here.”

I told myself I was not afraid.  Nevertheless, visions of tigers and bears kept flashing through my mind, and at any moment I expected something to come crashing through those trees ahead.  So, falling back on the old adage that discretion is the better part of valor, I told Heath that I didn’t want squirrel for supper after all.

“Okay, Mom, if you’re scared, let’s go,” Heath said with exasperation.  But, gripping his rifle, he hastened to lead us back to the edge of the woods.  We crossed the fence into the field, certain we were being pursued.  We did not even notice the clinging bushes and vines.  We could hear the sound more clearly now.  There could be no doubt.  It had to be the breathing of some fantastic animal!

“I don’t know about you,” Heath said, without breaking stride, “but I swear I can feel hot breath on the back of my neck.”  At that moment, I don’t think anything on earth could have made me turn around.

About a quarter of a mile from home, but with two more fences yet to cross, the cows were still contentedly munching away, undisturbed; yet we wasted no time crossing the first section of the field.

The now distinct wheezing behind us was still in the trees, but prodded us into what can only be described as head-long flight.  I am, at best, a poor runner, but managed to stay close behind my son.  The mounded earth, however, proved my undoing, and I suddenly went sprawling.  Heath, hearing my “oomph,” stopped immediately and turned to help me.  As he reached for me, his eyes rose slowly to a point above my head and his mouth fell open.  “Oh… my… gosh!” he murmured breathlessly.

“Run!  Save yourself!” I screamed, and covered my head with my arms.

Suddenly Heath burst into laughter, and fell to his knees in front of me.

Stunned, I rolled over slowly and looked up.  It took a few moments for my brain to register the fact that I was not going to be consumed.  The loveliest hot air balloon was skimming the treetops as it soared into the field just a few feet higher than our heads.

I lay there, gaping, gradually realizing that the harsh breathing was actually the sound of the huge flame shooting up into the opening at the base of the balloon.  As the adrenaline in my body began to subside, the dragon image remained fixed in my mind.  An indrawn breath; then the flame shot up in a steady rhythm of breathing.  In my fevered imagination, the blue, white and yellow zigzag design encircling the balloon still resembled dragon’s teeth.  The towering height and immense girth lent proportion to the illusion.

As I watched the balloon and its waving passengers move slowly away, I knew that the sight of one of these graceful travelers would always invoke memories of my encounter with a dragon.

The End