>>325250>Needles to sayI spend a lot of time in the middle of nowhere thanks to work, and some of the most interesting stuff is out at night. Here's an example:
>In desert in west Texas>Decide to go looking for snakes at night>Headlamp, snake stick, big canvas bag, I'm all set>Go a couple of miles, see lots of scorpions>A few black-tailed rattlers, but I don't like handling venomous snakes, so I leave 'em be>Where my non-venomous hissers at?>Finally see something without a rattle slither under a rock in a dry wash>Crouching down, shining light into the hole, trying to see it>Down like that for a good 15 minutes before giving up>When I stand up, I startle 30+ javelinas that have come into the other end of the wash>Usually they run away from people>These ones had piglets>Get weirdly aggressive and start approaching>Speedwalk out of there with 30 javelinas following me and clicking their teeth>Headlamp dies halfway back>The spare batteries I thought were charged are not, in fact, charged>Feeling my way through the dark with javelinas going clickety-click somewhere behind me>Thinking the whole time about that story of the peccaries in the Amazon that cornered guys in trees and then started digging out the tree roots>Eventually come to big rock>Climb rock>Listen to javelinas circling rock and clicking teeth for next hour before they get tired and leave>Stay on rock until sun comes up>Stumble into camp as everyone else is eating breakfast>"How many snakes you get, Anon?"This is why it's a bad thing for your co-workers to be used to you roaming around all night. No one gets worried when you don't come back.
