"You've found three already?"

Monday, March 7, 2011

“That needle for hot and cold went all the way to hot and the car started dinging at me…so I pulled into a parking lot. What should I do now?” Holly asked.

“Well…you did the right thing. I’m on my way,” I replied. Not good. She’d been telling me she wasn’t getting any heat in the van and I was scheduled to take it to see Dan after work. But the damn thing couldn’t wait until then. I grabbed a gallon of anti-freeze and a gallon of water and went to meet her. My hope was that I could get it to run cool enough to get it to Dan’s and avoid the tow.

I filled the radiator with fluid…it only took about a half gallon so I didn’t hold out much hope. With good reason. It didn’t do a bit of good and I called for a tow. Dan would check it out later and give me a call with the bad news. What’s worse is that since I don’t have a functioning road bike, I’ll have to drive out to pick it up instead of my normal bike ride to Chardon.

I made my way to the Metropark for another hike after work. I was reinvigorated for antler searching after seeing the two deer in my back yard yesterday still carrying antlers. There was a couple of inches on the ground…just enough to make them stand out without covering them completely. I hadn’t gone five minutes when after climbing out of a small ravine, came face to face with…a face.

I did a double take…but it was definitely a skull with both antlers attached lying against the base of a tree. I picked it up to discover it was fairly complete with all of the teeth to the upper jaw. The lower jaw was missing. Though I’d seen many like this in my friend Jeff’s fathers’ garage, I never expected to find one. I had left a message for Jeff earlier in the day to question him about how late into the season I might expect to find antlers, but he hadn’t called back yet. I continued my search with my trophy hanging loosely from my hand.

I felt the vibration of the phone and reached into my pocket to check the display. It was Jeff and I answered, explaining to him what I’d been doing, but not mentioning what I’d found to date. “My dad has found them into May and they’re still dropping now. In fact, if you find a big one, look around for the other. The bucks are really unbalanced when they lose one and try to knock the other one off right away,” he told me. “They’re really hard to find though…I’ve only found one antler over the years,” he concluded.

“Oh?…I...um…I’ve found three…actually. I figured I was doing poorly…,” I replied. There was a pause before he answered. “You’ve found three? You called to rub it in…didn’t you?”

I hadn’t actually…though it was something I’d do. “Yeah…I’m holding a skull right now.”

“You’re holding a skull?”

“Well…no…I’m holding an antler…but it’s attached at the other end to a skull,” I said. We talked some more about his dad…the ‘Michael Jordan’ of antler hunting. He’d found seven this year already and averaged twenty a season. I tried to soften the blow of my discoveries by claiming to be lucky…which I was. I’d walked within twenty feet of today’s find on at least two other occasions and not seen it. We agreed that I’d come out to see his dad soon to show him my trophies and hung up.

That was it for the evening though. I did see my beaver friend as I worked my way around the marsh and saw an eagle overhead as I made my way back into the woods. He was flying into the sun and was out of sight before I could get a picture, though. I know I need to give up the searching soon because it consumes all of my training time and I can’t see myself working ‘antler hunting’ into my birthday triathlon.

Hike duration: 2 hours.
Training Heart Rate: 90 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 500.