Boyce Mayview Park
Upper St Clair
Pennsylvania
September 2017
Lisa and I are on a training hike in Boyce Mayview Park, not too far from home. At the highest point of a loop, where several trails converge, a cute little dog comes bounding from the brush, happy as dogs usually are. Following behind is a hiker. Or a dog-walker, anyway. We begin to chat, or rather, he begins his monologue.
I don’t know how this happened, but before we know it, he is rummaging through his pockets to show us photographs of his recent colonoscopy. I could make this up, but I wouldn’t expect you to believe it. “Dang,” he says. “I left them in the car.” Thank you one and all.
He said that they found some polyps in his colon. I sincerely tried not to listen at this point, but he persisted. “Tied them off with roach clips.”
“Roach clips? Really? That’s an unusual procedure.”
He calls his dog Mutt.
“Is that his name?” I ask.
“Yep.” Catching us off guard again, we hear about Mutt’s surgery. Seems the poor sod swallowed a treble fish hook. Also line and sinker. Our new friend picks up Mutt under his doggy armpits and shows us the six-inch scar on his belly. Mutt seems none the worse.
Dude’s wearing a SpongeBob knit hat.
He describes some snakes he’s seen on the trail. “Y’know, the ones with the big butts.”
“Snakes don’t have butts,” I say, trying, but failing, not to be drawn in. “No hips, no butts.”
“Well, there you have it,” he offers by way of explanation.
Actually, snakes do have hip bones but they are embedded in soft tissue, don’t connect to the spine and don’t articulate with legs. I just said what I said to mess with him.
Suddenly, we’re hearing about hunting and fishing. “Yeah, it’s muzzle loaders season, the best type of hunting ‘cause it takes so long. You’ve got to stop and go through the whole this and that. You gotta grease it and measure it, fill it, all kinds of stuff. You hikers have a better shot at surviving. Ha! A better shot! Ha ha!
“Now if you’re fishin’…”
Whoa, I just got whiplash.
“Now if you’re fishin’,” he continues, “You use peanut butter and cord because it goes through with the least amount of processing.”
I’m lost. But I wonder if the peanut butter is why ole Mutt swallowed the hooks.
Next we know, he gives us a gift certificate to Rock Bottom Restaurant, with this explanation: “I’m never gonna use it. Whatever I ate there — probably Mexican food — made me crap my pants…”
Ah man! Without a word to each other, Lisa and I realize that if something doesn’t happen soon, like an earthquake or a space-time portal opening up right here at the summit, we will be stuck, captive to endless accounts of nauseating alimentary horrors.
“C’mon, walk us down to the road,” I say. It works. At the junction he goes that way, we go this.
Oh my. Next time I hear a muzzle loader or a fishing line whistling through the air, I’ll saddle up my snake and hightail it out of there.