Close Shave with a Twister

This past July 7 sometime not long after midday, Squirrel-Eating Jon went upstairs for nap, belly full of a nice dinner of squirrels. He had only just laid down on the ancient lumpy mattress when there came the rumble of thunder. That’s odd, he thought, he had not noticed clouds. The day nonetheless – the first truly hot one in a notably reluctant year – had had a strange feel to it. Dead still, uncommonly sultry for the foothills, and velvety soft of the air.

He stood up and took a look out the bedroom window. Trees were swaying wildly and there was a strange sound, like surf. He proceeded to the bedroom door and it was all he could do to open it – the inside of the house had become somehow pressurized. He managed nonetheless and went downstairs and out the back to take a gander at the sky.

The atmosphere was a chaos of boiling cloud and the sky seemed to be filled with thousands of medium-sized birds. There was a freight-train sound. Where on earth did all those birds from, he wondered, until he realized it wasn’t birds filling the sky but rather forest debris. He went around the corner of the house and looked to the south. There was no detail to the scene, just a chaotic grey mass. Something big was happening. Out in the pasture and over the hayfield, small tornados were snaking down like anteater tongues, touching down two or three at a time, sucking up a pack of crap from the ground and recoiling back into the inverted cauldron that spawned them. The horses were bolting into the paddock for cover. Just to the south where the bulk of the mass seemed to be passing eastwards, there was still no detail, just a deep gray wall of chaotic sky. “This is fantastic!” Jon thought, spellbound by the scene.

Only when it was all about a mile past to the due east did he discern a great black wedge, an inverted triangle on the horizon. And then it was done. The horses were already filtering back out to feed, this being the thing that most occupies their minds at all times besides when there is a puma on their back. Jon went up and had his nap. Midday in summer not being his favorite part of the circadian spectrum.

When he woke up a half hour or a few days later he could hear chainsaws already. People in the country in this disintegrated era can be starved for relevance, and waste no time getting on the scene of even a minor disaster, which Eating assumed this had been. He envisaged a tree or two down in the road and that was about it. Despite what he had seemed to have witnessed, big tornados are very rare in the foothills.

A few hours later he needed to go to town. His jaw dropped slack like the old men you see in rural places through the windshields of their oncoming old Buicks doing their best impersonations of Basking sharks. A large block of his deer-woods had been sheared-off about 20 feet up. Looking to the east, the thing had similarly flattened entire woodlots.

Things that occured to him upon witnessing the awesome scale of destruction: 1) Next time the sky is full of boiling debris, head to the root-cellar; 2) What sorts of varmints might benefit from situations where all the woods is lying on the ground? Voles, hares, weasels, martens doubtless. Smaller stuff. But some big stuff, too. Great day-bed cover for grizzlies and denning opportunities for black bear. Good escape cover for mule deer perhaps, their “stotting” gait having evolved to negotiate deadfall; 3) Did it suck up any cows?

He had always wanted to see a flying cow.

What the storm looked like through some guy’s camera from 20 miles to the east, looking across the plains to the west.

The one neighbor’s woods.

This doe and yearling were confused over their territory’s new look. They came right past Jon, who was standing in plain view. It’s a good thing his stomach was full of squirrels.