Cross Dressers, Fake Talkers, Sticks That Zing

The turkey are the first to feel it. Leaves begin dying, the air turns crisp. The woods have an eerie presence, like danger in the air. The fake-talkers — cross dressers —  will soon be here to break up the flock, then fake talk them back together. The turkey often get confused!

The deer spook easily. And they watch, their eyes scanning the woods, while the winds blow soft and free — gently whistling through the trees. At first, danger comes from the trees, from the cross dressers, who strike from up high without warning; no leaves to rustle, or eye-level movement, or ground-level smells. Just a deadly zing, without warning. Hopefully, for the deer, struck by the zinging sticks, death comes swiftly — but it always doesn't.

Even the raccoons get mixed up, too, and they fear for their forest friends. The stay in groups, and hunt together, knowing danger will be arriving. They see the cross dressers in the trees, the fake talkers, and the men in pumpkin suits. The odd sounding guns, the soldiers, and the people who can't walk but shoot from the big moving things. They stay hidden, and think about the line in the street in the nearby town when the laurel flowers come, and sweet smells from the sticky tasty things that cover the ground, good stuff thrown away by the humans..

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And the big ones, most attractive to the hunters, step softly and quietly in the woods. First, the cross dressers in the trees — the men with the zinging sticks who can't be seen or smelled, almost as if they are invisible  —  then come the men in the pumpkin suits. The big ones are in the most danger and many won't see their brethren pulling Santa's  sleigh in the moon-lit sky.

The long sleepers have their turn too, in perhaps the longest danger season of all. From the zinging sticks, to when the old guns appear — like they did a hundred years ago — funny sounding with smoke. Even human soldiers and those who can't walk in the woods, but shoot from the big moving boxes on wheels, even before the sleeping season begins.

End.