IT'S OVER

 As I write this, a tick falls from my hair and scuttles across the keyboard. That's why I'm a mac person. Can't spot 'em on those black PCs. The season ended at noon today. I gave it one last try. In the woods by 4:45 am, I heard one roost gobble about a mile away, towards Diamond Dave's. That was it. I saw nothing and heard nothing more. Aside from the ticks, the mosquitos had awoken with the warm, wet weather, making the hot morning even more miserable. I confess, I didn't make it until noon. All in all it was a spotty season. I'd missed birds, and hit birds. But that day, when they gobble at everything and they drive you crazy all morning, never came. The weather was unseasonably cold and rainy. The birds never talked. But as much as i bitch about silent turkeys and bad weather, I got nothing on little brother Smokey. Here's how he spent Memorial weekend.

As told to me by Smokey, as best as I can recall:

   Smokey and my sis-in-law SueBO arrived at their lake house in the dark. They brought with them all the fixings for a festive weekend with the kids and grandkids, as well as the new interior for their pontoon party boat. The first thing they noticed, even in the dark, was how high the lake was. That was a good thing. The pontoon boat would float right off the trailer. They'd recently installed five sectional docks, jutting 50 feet into the lake. Smokey shined his light out along the poles. Two were missing. In the light they could see the white caps and five foot swells. The docks had floated right off the poles.
     The wind was out of the Northeast. With some shore searching, Smokey located and secured the missing docks and loaded the party boat interior into their basement house. The hill had recently shifted and cracked the foundation. There was now a 9 inch drop in the floor. The spring line had broken for the umpteenth time, so they had decided to drill a well. They were down over 380 feet and it was still spewing black gooey slime. "I've never seen anything like this." the 80 year old well driller told SBO, scratching his head. "We hear that a lot." was all Sue could muster.
   Smokey awoke at 2 am to a god awful crashing at the shore. Two more docks had escaped and now joined the captive two, smashing against the rocks in a splintered, orgiastic, cacophony. If they had built any closer to the shore they'd have been washed away. Any higher on the hill and they'd have ridden the mud slide into the drink. Smokey shined his boots with his flashlight. Maybe it would look better in daylight. Yeah.....right.
    In the morning, as one kid after another canceled and SueBO bundled up in the 40 degree weather, trying to keep a good face, raking rocks pointlessly, Smokey disappeared. After a half an hour SBO began to wonder where he'd gone. After an hour she was worried. The gale force wind whipped the lake, the sky dirty with freezing rain squalls. When Sue could take it no longer, she headed down the steep path towards the rocks. She met Smokey coming up, disheveled and soaking wet. He'd gone down to try to salvage the last of the 5 docks, when a swell hit it, knocking Smokey off his feet and flipping him into the icy water. The storm had destroyed 4 of his docks and the fifth one tried to kill him. Sue let him have it. "I HAD NO IDEA WHERE YOU WERE! YOU COULD'VE BEEN KILLED AND WASHED OUT INTO THE LAKE AND I'D NEVER HAVE......."
Smokey wrung out a shirt sleeve and looked up at his wife. "I only wish." was all he could muster.
   I told him to arrange the pontoon boat furniture in the basement, buy some posters, black lights, and a keg a beer, draw the shades, lock the door and never look at that lake again. "It's over." he said. "I give up. This place beat me. We called the real estate agent yesterday." He seemed happier than he'd been in years.

FOR SALE- Beautiful lakeside property on Lake Champlain, Vermont side. As is.