Wild on the Lake

The first overnight of the season had arrived. I invited my girlfriends to the lake house. We arrived at dinner time, and each of us brought something for a pot luck dinner.

Kristen had sweet and sour meatballs in a crockpot; Andrea brought homemade breads for dipping, and for breakfast. Kay had bags full of snacks, chips, salsa, cheese, crackers, and assorted Little Debbie products; and Katie carried a platter of shrimp cocktail which almost didn’t make it into the house since the hill was wet from rain.

Poor Katie slipped on her ass, and saved the platter but not her white pants. She stood at the backdoor embarrassed that she was covered in mud. None of us witnessed her fall, though we all also got soaked on the walk down the hill.

Katie stood on the porch wet, muddy, and crying. “What’s wrong?” I asked, about to hold the door open for her but quickly realized what happened.

Katie was laughing and crying all at the same time. “Take the platter, take the platter!” she said, then began to strip off her pants.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

The other ladies crowded the small galley kitchen to see the commotion.

Katie was hysterically laughing, crying and shouting over the thunder. “I don’t want to bring mud into the house.”

She stripped down to her attractive lace undies, and a tank top. We all laughed watching the comical short show.

The rest of the evening was filled with more laughter, drinks and continuous snacking. At midnight, a few of us decided to remove our own clothes, except for undies and t-shirts, and go for a dip in the lake. But as we walked out the door, the rain began to pick up, so we changed our minds.

In the morning, I woke up early and made a cup of tea. The sun was rising above the treetops so I ventured to the dock to dip my toes in the water. I anticipated the water would be cold since only a few weeks earlier the water had still been frozen, but before I even stepped onto the dock, a horrible stench caught me by surprise; and I screamed.

Andrea and Katie were looking out the porch window and saw me quickly running back to the house.

“What’s wrong?” they asked.

Through my hyperventatilion, I told them there was a huge dead animal floating in the water and partially stuck under the dock.

The three of us walked as bravely as we could to see this carcass. Feeling like the young boys in that movie STAND BY ME, where they walked over the train tracks to look at the body of a dead man.

Thankfully this wasn’t a person. It looked like a dog, a very, very large one.

“Holy cow” said Katie, adding, “Thank God, we didn’t go swimming last night.”

Vomit rose in my throat and I turned away wanting to cry for the poor drowned animal, and wanting to scrub my body thinking about what I would have done if I jumped in the lake last night to discover that carcass touching me.

“It’s been in the water a long time.” Said Andrea.

“I can’t take it out.” I said, physically shaking the thought out of my head.

It was girl’s weekend, it was my house. We planned to float on the water and bake in the sun but this animal was ruining the fun. My husband wasn’t in town, and this was a job for him.

I looked around at my neighbor’s cottages, no one was around. Then I remembered the bachelor three doors down. I didn’t know him well, but my husband did, so I walked up the stairs to his A-frame. I could see him on the couch as I knocked on the glass door. He looked confused to see me. “Good morning neighbor.” He said, “Enjoying a girl’s weekend?”

I smiled and said, “Well, actually that is why I am here. I was enjoying the weekend but as it is about to begin with official day one, I find myself in need of a husband.”

His eyebrows rose but before he could respond, I said, “I need a dead body removed.”

We both laughed. He thought it was a joke, and I realized how absurd the truth of my request was. I explained my discovery, and he gladly helped but not without gagging himself.

He used a pitchfork and loaded what we learned was a coyote onto a tarp. He then tossed it into a wagon attached to his four wheeler and drove it deep into the woods.

Later that day, another neighbor arrived, I asked him how his winter was and he said, it was good. He then told me how the frozen lake had more wildlife than normal this year. He said, “I caught a lot of them walking on the ice and got some great photos.”

I told him about my morning and he shared a photo from his iPhone. There was the coyote walking on the frozen pond. It was beautiful and peaceful to see but the reality of its future made me realize that this particular coyote had a bigger story to tell then just washing up at my dock.

I named him Wiley, after the coyote in the Roadrunner Cartoon. Wiley lived in the forests of Brimfield waiting for the lake to freeze so he and his friends could have fun without all the summer residents around. What Wiley didn’t know was that where the ice was too thin, he would fall, die, and wouldn’t make it back to land until those summer folks came back around again.

In a makeshift body bag, Wiley was dragged deep into the forest where other creatures would eat of its flesh, never knowing how of its journey ended. Wiley the coyote, would only be remembered by a few girls drenched in wine, rain, and arriving to begin the summer fun.

So with glasses raised, we toasted Wiley, and gave thanks for the rain which prevented us from swimming with him. We also toasted the summer neighbors who discovered the coyote while alive, and removed its dead body so we could swim again.