TALUS MONKEY stories

[OBX Fisherman]

Here’s a story from waaay back, early 1990’s I think.

David and I visited his mother and stepfather near Mt Airy NC and did some target shooting. We decided to do some camping and exploring in Virginia that afternoon/evening. So we headed north to Smith Mountain Lake. After driving around the lake we found a nice state park and decided to camp. I had a can of Sterno to cook with. I had hot dogs and David had his favorite camp food, Vienna Sausages! Our tent was pitched on nice campsite with trees all around us and no other campers. A small tree next to the site had a branch broken off years ago and the interior was rotted out. Inside was a massive ant colony. Not sure which one of us had the bright idea, but the ant colony had to go…. in a spectacular way. We ended up spooning flaming sterno down their front door! We reveled in the “mass genocide” of the ants but we were never able to completely get rid them. (We poured water on the tree to extinguish the sterno once enough ants were destroyed)

That night we were sleeping in a small tent of David’s. We both had K-mart sleeping bags and no insulation barrier. (We haven’t learned our lesson about those… another camping story from VA!) About 3 in the morning I rolled onto my side with my back to David and using my free arm reached over my head to reposition the small blanket I had to cover my head to keep warm. I was feeling around for it and scratching on the floor of the tent to find it. All of sudden David reaches out and starts hitting my arm!! I’m like “Hey butthead, what are you doing?!” David sits up and says “that’s you? I thought a deer was reaching into the tent with it’s leg!” I said “a deer leg?!” and began laughing my ass off!! David was still convinced it was some critter! Scary part was we were target shooting a day earlier and there was some “hardware” in the tent with us. Glad he didn’t reach for that!!! We still laughed about the “deer leg incident” years later!


Another time we went camping and found a mom and pops campground near the New River in VA. It was in October and we carried our sleeping bags and blankets with us. Once again we were the only campers in the place. It was a beautiful clear night far away from any light so you could see every star in the sky. We turned in for the night, (after hot dogs and Vienna Sausages!) in a nice dome tent I brought. Unfortunately we didn’t pay attention to the weather earlier that day. On a clear night in October in VA the temperatures plummits! Around 2 in the morning we wake up shivering. Neither of us had an insulation mat between us and the ground. It was so cold the ground was drawing our heat away. Out K-mart sleeping bags were probably rated down to 45 degrees or so, but that night in VA the temperature dropped down to 17 degrees! After and 30 minutes of trying to keep warm we abandoned the tent and retreated to my jeep. My jeep had a nice v8 engine that kept us warm the rest of the night. Upon our return to civilization we both invested in some thermal sleeping mats and swore to never leave home with out them!

Gary