The Island

 

This picture is of an island near where I live and work. It is a couple of square miles large and completely undeveloped. The current owners used to let people camp out on the island overnight.

Those days are gone now and no trespassing signs are prominently displayed right above the high water mark on the beach. I can’t tell you how depressing it is to see such a beautiful place be declared off limits.

I do understand how it came to be off limits, though. It seems modern civilization started leaving more and more piles of garbage in the area on the island formerly used for camping.

Then there was the irate father whose daughter went to the island with a teenage boy and some beer to join a group around the campfire. The father seemed to think the owners of the island should be held responsible for his daughter being there, not the daughter!

I remember the times I have explored the island’s interior and seen the tracks of wild animals. I still love to watch the eagle’s nest and the osprey’s nest when I can get around the backside of the island by boat. Many times when the osprey hunts, the eagle hangs back and waits for the osprey to catch a fish. Then, the eagle swoops down and tries to steal the fish from the osprey. It takes a while, but the eagle usually ends up with the fish.

Oh, and there was the lady whom, upon returning from the island, gleefully showed me the large Indian arrowhead she found on the beach there after a storm. She said it was laying there in the sand where the tide had gone out, fully exposed to the naked eye. I must say I was a little envious of her find! LOL!

The best story about this island, though, is the time a group of about six teenage boys camped out on the island. At night after all had retired to the relative safety of their tents, they heard a noise coming from the middle of the campsite. Peeking out, they saw a large boar rutting through their possessions that were left outside. They were six very scared teenagers.

So, what does a scared teenager do in this modern day when frightened in the wild? They used a cell phone to call one of the fathers and told him about the wild boar. What else?

Now, you’ve got to appreciate the fact that during hunting season it seems that every male above the age of 12 is a hunter in these parts (those days are long over for me by choice). This little camping trip was in the fall hunting season and, of course, the father had to wake up three of the other fathers instructing all to get their guns and meet at the dock.

It would have been simple for the boys to take their boat and go pick up the brave and fully armed Dads, but they were too scared to leave the tents. So, at Three Am on this Fall Sunday morning, four grown men are scrambling to get their boat launched to, (What, you thought save the teenagers? Ha!), track this boar down and bag him! Visions of sitting around the campfire the next day roasting fresh game filled these suburban fathers’ heads.

Here’s a secret these Dads should have known. Boars are very smart creatures. They have excellent hearing and even better eyesight. The boar took off at the first sound of the outboard motor being fired up across the marsh grass. By the time the dads got there it was long gone and any hope of tracking it down was to no avail.

You should have seen this tired mess of humanity stumbling back to the docks the next morning with absolutely no sleep. It took a while for them to live this story down at the marina.

How did everyone know what had happened? Remember the teenager who had the cell phone? Yep! You guessed it! Seems he couldn’t wait to call all his friends and tell them about his brave Dad, LOL!