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I don’t really think that there is any real way of getting used to the sight of an eight foot tall hairy anthropoid in midflight - especially when he is jumping out of the door of a giant pink flying Winnebago motor home.
“GEE-RON-AH-HOO-HAW!” Bigfoot yelled as he hurtled downwards.
“Do you think he might hurt himself?” I asked the Coyote, who was busy keeping the Winnebago in the air.
“That depends on what he lands on.”
“Shouldn’t you be trying to help him?” I said.
“What, and spoil all of his fun?” Coyote replied. “Take it from me, kid. Bigfoot actually likes this part of his work. You watch and see – he’s awfully good at it.”
I supposed that Coyote was right. After all, Bigfoot was only jumping from about twenty feet up and that lake water looked pretty deep.
He ought to land with a fine and comfortable splash.
Only he didn’t land in the water.
The second Mishi Peshu not-quite-dragon snapped at Bigfoot who sort of twisted in mid-fall and caught hold of the long row of spikes that were step-laddered up the monster’s long backbone. Then Bigfoot hand-over-handed up the monster’s backbone, swinging from spike to spike like some kind of a great ape trapeze artist.
The third Mishi Peshu not-quite-dragon tried to take a bite out of the neck-clambering Bigfoot that was clambering his brother’s backbone.
I suppose it could have been his sister’s backbone. I mean, there was really know of telling whether each of these Mishi Peshu’s were actually a boy or girl.
“Come here, ugly.” Bigfoot called out, catching hold of the third Mishi Peshu’s lower jawbone with one big hairy fist and sort of twisting the beast’s head sideways with pure brute force.
Meanwhile the first Mishi Peshu kept a firm mouth-hold of The Prophet’s rear left tire. I guess it figured that there was no way on earth that a tiny little Bigfoot was going to be that much trouble to a pair of full-grown Mishi Peshu.
That just shows you what he knew.
Or she.
“Shouldn’t you at least try and do something about that dragon that is hanging onto our Winnebago’s tire?” I suggested to Coyote. “I mean, how puncture proof ARE we?”
“The Prophet is perfectly capable of taking care of himself,” Coyote said. “Just you watch and wait and see.”
By now I was beginning to get the idea that Coyote wasn’t all that fond of any form of face-to-face confrontation. In fact, if I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes falling out of the sky onto that spirit bear back in Cape Breton – even though he missed – I would have begun to suspect him of outright cowardice.
But he was right about the Prophet.
When the first Mishi Peshu not-quite-dragon bit down on the Prophet’s rear left tire there was a sound sort of a like a low rumble of summer thunder crossed with a loud cheek-flapping bean fart. The Mishi Peshu’s head swelled up like a balloon that had one one too many puffs of breath forced in.
Then that first Mishi Peshu hissed like a wet cat and slithered backwards into the deep cold waters of Lake Superior.
The air around the flying Winnebago grew green and funky.
“See,” Coyote said, holding his nose tightly with his front paw. “I told you that the Prophet could handle it himself.”
I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. That green tire funk smelled worse than a road-killed cabbage-fed skunk in the middle of a hot summer day.
Bigfoot didn’t look to be doing so well either.
The third Mishi Peshu – the one that Bigfoot had been hanging onto by the jawbone had shifted his mouth and bit down on Bigfoot’s fist. Meanwhile the other Mishi Peshu had caught hold of Bigfoot’s other fist and the two of those lake monsters looked to be trying their level best to make a wishbone out of Bigfoot.
“You’ve got to do something!” I said to Coyote.
Coyote sort of shrugged and lifted his hind leg towards the open Winnebago door and then he did what dogs do best and let a little warm smelly yellow rain fall down upon the ears of the two lynx-headed monsters.
“Most cats just hate it when you do that to them,” Coyote said. “Even the big cats hate to get wet.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But that’s still pretty gross.”
“You told me to do something,” Coyote said, with a shrug. “So I did it.”
“That wasn’t quite what I had in mind.” I replied.
Still, Coyote’s contribution did actually manage to distract the second Mishi Peshu for about a half of a half a second. Bigfoot made the most of the smelly diversion, hauling the second Mishi Peshu’s neck around the third by pure brute force.
“Let’s see if I remember how this works now,” Bigfoot roared. “The little rabbit comes out of the hole and then he runs down under the log and then he jumps up over the log and then he heads back into its hole and the holes close up – right over left and left over right makes you a knot that’s tidy and tight.”
It was a little like watching the world’s biggest hairiest Boy Scout tying himself a great-great-great-granny knot.
“Yes sir, I love to see a craftsman at work,” Coyote said.
“How does that look to you two?” Bigfoot asked us.
I took a look. Bigfoot had tied the two Mishi Peshu’s long necks into a regular granny knot – faster than you could say Baden Powell Boy Scout.
“I think the proper question is more accurately WHAT is that?” I said.
“That there is a proper Turkish half and a half hitch reef knot,” Bigfoot happily announced, as we landed beside him on the shores of the Thunder Cape. “I didn’t really want to go and hurt them. They are an endangered species, after all. This way I figure that it will take them at least a week and a half of full-grown tomorrows to untangle themselves. By then they will be hungry and they will head for the deep water and get out of our hair.”
Which sounded reasonable.
As for me, I just wrinkled my nose in a great show of pure freaking disgust.
Knots or not, nothing reeks harder than a soggy wet and partially peed-on Bigfoot.