- April 22, 2024
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It was a calm, clear Saturday night on St. John’s River, and I was squatting in the nearby Ocala National Forest taking a bathroom break from my canoe trip when I heard it: a rustling in the quiet, black woods ahead of me.
I took my eyes off the moon hanging over the eastern horizon and looked around, the pale white glow of my headlamp illuminating the bark of nearby cypresses as I whipped my head from side to side searching for the source of the noise.
Nothing.
The headlamp, due for new batteries, showed me tree trunks and leaves a few feet ahead, but nothing further.
Nothing moving.
Must’ve been a squirrel, I assured myself. Or maybe a bird. Nothing to worry about.
I went back to my business and was finishing up, setting aside the toilet paper, when I heard branches cracking — much louder this time — and I froze.
This was no squirrel.
Again I looked up, and this time I saw it — two great, glowing, egg yolk-yellow eyes illuminated in the headlamp’s light, staring back at me.
The creature didn’t move, and I, still restricted by the cargo pants resting around my ankles, didn’t move either.
The Thing was surrounded by blackness so pure I couldn’t tell how tall it was, or whether it was 15 feet from me, or 30, or more.
Surely, I thought, whatever it was would go away. What wild animal would deliberately approach a human?
So I squatted and stared, listening to my heartbeat and breathing.
But the two bright yellow orbs shifted, and the rustling began again.
God, it was coming right at me!
“Hey!” I snarled at The Thing. “Get outta here!”
It paused.
“Go on. Git!” I yelled.
The Thing didn’t “git.” It paused and kept coming — faster now — and I figured whatever it was must be rabid.
Would it attack me, tearing at my bare skin like the rabid dog in that old horror movie? Would I come down with the disease and attack my own dog in a rabid frenzy? Would the Palm Coast Observer end up printing the headline, “Rabid reporter bites dog”?
I stumbled backward over the cypress roots, hauling up my pants with my left hand and waving my roll of Scott’s-brand one-ply toilet tissue like a weapon with my right, yelling at The Thing to go away.
The huge yellow eyes kept coming.
And coming. And coming. The Thing was quickly closing the gap as I scrambled away from it.
Finally I smacked into the side of the canoe, hopped in — The Thing now in the trees just behind me — and shoved off, hoping mightily that whatever creature was chasing me didn’t like water.
Hefting a paddle, I kept my headlight trained on the shoreline, and, finally, THERE IT WAS, stepping into the light: a pointed black nose, followed by the two round yellow eyes and a fuzzy body roughly the size of my miniature poodle’s: An opossum.
Of course.
They have terrible hearing and eyesight (and almost never carry rabies); the poor thing probably barely even noticed my bare-butted scramble back to the canoe.
As I changed the batteries on my headlight and paddled off, I had to chuckle: One of the woods' most innocuous creatures had just taken a good-sized bite out of my pride.
