I have to warn you. In this post, I am going to use the words “pee” and “peeing”. I don’t like these words, but I think “urinate” is just as bad and, under these circumstances, “going to the bathroom” just doesn’t work.
When I camp, I never worry about wild animals. I worry about wild people. If I camped out in the middle of nowhere, all I would think is about all the mass murders who likely tromp around in the woods looking for lonely campers like in the movies- because, after all, that would be the most efficient way for mass murders to find victims, right? Wandering through isolated, desolate camping areas as opposed to heavily populated suburbs. When I camp in organized areas, I carefully review my neighbors before pitching my tent. If there are just men, I don’t camp there. Families have loud children with radios and bicycles or noisy dogs. Couples are absolutely perfect. But, wild animals never worry me at all. In fact, before camping in the wilds of Argentina, I think I did a five minute search on animals – learned that there are wild cats like pumas but nothing –really- dangerous. No bears or food worries. Great. So, fast forward to actual camping.
I hate having to pee in the middle of the night. It’s not because I don’t want to go into the dark. It’s because I am snug in my sleeping bag and no I have to get up, get out, unzip lots of things, put on my shoes, find the toilet paper, find the flashlight, find the little trash bag, climb out into the super cold and start walking. So, I do everything to avoid it. I stop drinking liquid a few hours before bed. The very, very, very last thing I do – even after brushing my teeth is pee before getting into the tent for the night. And, when I finally do wake up in the middle of the night, I lay there for an hour trying to convince myself that I don’t really have to go...but I always do.
So, this particular night, by the time I had gotten into the tent, I had already peed once but of course I woke up around 3 a.m. needing to go. I got out of my tent into the really, really freezing cold mountain air and started to head toward the night’s selected peeing spot when suddenly there was a loud bush rattling. If it had been a stage affect, people would have giggled because it was so overly dramatic. Of course, this was not a stage. This was the middle of no where middle of the night in Argentina. I stopped. I pointed my flashlight at the bush. I listened. Nothing. I couldn’t see anything. The rattling bush was between me and the planned peeing place. My heart was racing. I had forgotten entirely about the cold. In fact, my palms were sweating. And of course, since I had lain in my sleeping bag for an hour trying to convince myself I didn’t need to pee and since I was particularly scared at that moment, I really really really had to pee. What to do? And then bush rattled again. This time, my flashlight was still on it and I actually saw the whole thing shake.
So, I decided to pee near my car, right behind the trunk because I thought worse case scenario I could climb on top of the car. Of course, the car keys were in the tent, but still, elevation would be good. Unless it was a puma – in which case, elevation wouldn’t help at all. This, of course was my line of thought while squatting in front of my car. Not exactly pee-friendly thinking. Pumas wouldn’t rattled bushes though, right? They’re predators. If I was going to be attacked by a puma, I wouldn’t hear it coming. This wasn’t exactly a comforting thought. Yes, I was still peeing, and I had the flashlight pointed at the threatening bush, and if either of the happy couple in the tent down the beach had wandered over at that point they would have gotten a very clear view of me, their neighbor, practically peeing on my own car tire. At this point, the bush rattled again and somewhere else in the night there was a screech that sounded exactly like one of the unfriendly dinosaurs from Jurassic park. I forgot about the cold. I forgot about the pumas. I thought about horror stories.
I’ve always been a bit of a storyteller, you can probably imagine, and when I was a kid, I particularly liked trying to scare my friends with horror stories. Laying in the dark, I’d start telling them about the demon downstairs, or the monster in the cornfield, or the baby ghost in a kitchen that would never stop crying, or my favorite – the one about the campers at a historic revolutionary war site (this one was true, of course) and one of the campers was dragged off by a “bear” but the next morning, boot prints were found by his tent…and the camper was never, ever, seen again. Ever. But the problem with this storytelling is that I always scared myself far worse than I scared the listener – even when I knew I was making up the story. I was always the one left laying awake in the night terrified by my own stupid story. So, squatting in front of my car at 3 a.m. holding a trembling flashlight, all I could think about was horror stories. And, the bush rattled again.
You know the kind of bush shaking I’m talking about. It’s the movie bush-shaking where the half naked girl is terrified but approaches the bushes anyway, the music rises to a single high pitched note, she pulls back the branch and finds two of her friends drunk and making out…and the tension is broken and everyone laughs. Then, a breath later when there is no music, the hideous monster attacks, killing the two friends instantly and chasing the screaming girl. That’s the kind of bush shaking I’m talking about, that’s what this bush was doing which meant the monster was right behind.
And I was done. My heart was pounding. My flashlight was trembling. I stood up, buttoned my pants, and started turning toward my tent. That’s when the battery in the flashlight went out and I heard this half howling sound coming from directly behind me. I wasn’t sure if I should run toward the tent to try to get the car keys or just jump onto the car, or maybe scream at the other tent and hope they heard me. I hesitated and that was the thing I shouldn’t have done because then it was right behind me. The bush gave one last rattle and I could actually hear the creature panting and I couldn’t see anything. I screamed then and ran toward my tent. I had no idea what was chasing me, but I could hear it. I scrambled into the tent and I was frantically trying to find my backpack in the dark so I could get to my car keys when behind me at the door the tent started to collapse. It was being dragged down the beach. I was thrown forward onto my stomach by the force of the sudden movement and the tent material folded down around me and….okay, okay. I’m completely lying...but just with this last paragraph. All the previous peeing and scary seizuring plant description was real. However, all the scary bits above did play out in my over-active imagination before I made my way, safely, back to my tent. I crawled in. I closed up the zippers which would clearly protect me from the outside world – I’m a true believer that if you don’t hang your feet over the bed, the monsters won’t come out from underneath it. And, they didn’t. This time.
Note: The photos are just random camping and hiking shots. I didn't have time to get to my camera for a snapshot of the monster.