TRAPPER'S TILT

Mark Schafron


The wind overnight swept the entire lake clean of the heavy snow, revealing a vast blue-black windowpane of ice. He chose a spot further along the shore, and scanned for flowing brooks that meant thin ice. He’d jig his smallest Daredevil. If that was a bust, he’d add a salmon egg to one of its barbs. No tip-up rig today—he didn’t feel like chopping extra holes.
	
He stepped out onto the ice, reaching ahead to stab hard with the long ice spud. Every two steps he’d stab again. The spud made reassuring thuds when he brought it down. Good ice, thick ice.
	
A dozen steps later, he felt the ice sway under his feet and give way. His mind flashed air pocket; there’s a spring down there, and he whipped the spud across his chest horizontally to check his fall but it was no good. It smashed through with him and he was gone.

                                                          ****

The old pickup jounced and squeaked up the frozen dirt road, shattering ice lenses in the ruts. Rudd looked out the passenger window at snow devils whirling across a stubble field. The midmorning sun made him squint, even through snow goggles.
	
Olin, red-bearded and camouflage-clad, double-clutched the truck to a lower gear.
	
“Almost to the trailhead,” he said.

“I know it,” Rudd said.
	
“You’re insane to be camping way out there.”
	
“It’s not that bad. There’s shelter.”
	
“You’ll be lucky if that old trapper’s tilt isn’t a pile of rotted logs under the snow.”
	
“Nah.”
	
“You’ve been away a long time. You sure you remember how to do this stuff?”
	
“I remember,” Rudd said. “And if things go south, I’ll burn the thing down and the smoke will bring help.”
	
Olin smiled a snuff-sloppy smile and shook his head.
	
“How long will you stay?”
	
“A week, or until I get bored, or until I run through my MREs. I may do some ice fishing.”
	
“You could always pop a grouse or three with that old Woodsman.”
	
Rudd brushed the Colt strapped across his chest with his fingertips.
	
“Only in extreme circumstances,” he said. 
                                                       
                                                         ****

Rudd snugged down his snowshoe bindings, then Olin helped him shoulder his enormous pack.
	
“Right,” Olin said. “See you in a week.” Rudd tossed a wave as the truck ground away.
	
He set out across the stubble field toward the tree line, his snowshoes making squeaking sounds as they crushed the powder. Spent goldenrod heads stuck up through the snowpack in places, and he saw tiny bird tracks where they’d picked apart the fallen seed heads. He stopped to inspect the dainty oval tracks of a fox, fresh, moving with straight-line intent across the field. Further on were the bouncing tracks of a mouse, whose progress ended in the outline of an owl’s angel-spread wings.
	
At the forest’s edge, Rudd stopped and tugged at his tumpline and belly bands, shifting the weight of the pack. He checked the sun’s position, scanned the shadows ahead of him, then marched into the woods.
	
The sun dropped pools of light through thick stands of Christmas-scented conifers, heavy-shouldered with snow. He wove through the trees and stomped through light deadfall to where he would intersect an abandoned trapline. He passed a temple of granite ledges where nearby spruce trees spiraled into bizarre shapes, as if groomed by some mad arborist. Rudd figured the porcupines who’d nipped and snipped those trees were listening to him pass from their dens in the rocks.
	
He found the trapline where the conifer forest gave way to deciduous trees. He turned east and went down the vague ribbon, shouldering through saplings reaching into the trail for room and light. 
	
The country opened up into an ancient logging slash with rotted waist-high stumps standing like tombstones in the snow. Later, he saw a sixty-foot white pine blasted by lightning into twins, both still alive. He marched on past a swamp trampled by moose. He passed a frozen beaver pond with a snowy lodge in the middle, steam rising from its central air vent. Rudd puffed up and down hills and squeezed through two triangular boulders standing like sentinels at a crest. Then he saw it off the trail ahead in a small clearing on a rise.
	
The trapper’s tilt was a rectangle made of unpeeled logs, with a slanted roof heaped with snow tilted in one direction like a simple garden shed. A hatch-like door was in the center. Beyond it, the trail continued toward a frozen lake. Rudd shoed down the incline and up the little hill to the door and shrugged off his pack. He looked around and saw plenty of standing dead timber for firewood. He unstrapped an entrenching tool from his pack and dug out the door. He stabbed the little shovel onto the snow bank he had made and pulled out a hatchet. He used the nail puller to pry away the bear guard, a square of plywood studded with nails. Rudd banged the two-by-four barring the door loose, pulled the door open, stooped and stepped in.
	
He took a deep breath through his nose. Musty with a strong smell of cedar but no scent of mold and no black stains on the sill logs. A rusty woodstove torched from part of an oil drum stood near the center of the space. To his left, a sideboard stretched the length of the east wall, while a raised wooden platform on short vertical logs—his bunk—took up the west wall.
	
Centered in the south wall was an old bathroom window cannibalized from somewhere—true luxury for a tilt. He went out, waded to the south wall and pried away that bear guard. He found a long branch and used it to snag the bucket on the chimney.
	
Rudd was tired and hungry, but it was time to make the tiny cabin his own.
	
He opened the stove. In bush tradition, the last occupant had laid a fire for the next visitor. Rudd would do the same when he left and leave behind any supplies he could spare. He liked the traditions. He took them with deep seriousness. Learning them and aligning with their rhythms made him feel anchored where elsewhere was chaos. Here, there would be no surprises. Nobody would come or go, either quietly or with drama. There was snow and wind and birds, moonlight on the snowpack through trees throwing deep blue shadows, tracks to read and appreciate in the morning light, and always the homey, safe smell of wood smoke. There was no need to think of big-picture things. That would only make things harder.
	
Rudd lit the fire and watched until it caught, then closed the stove door and vented it. He brought a bow saw out of the pack and assembled it. He went out with the saw and hatchet and scouted for the right tree to cut for extra firewood. He eyeballed a tall dead spruce up and down, gauging the front cut so it would drop onto the trail without hanging up. The dead frozen wood cut easily and made a satisfying pile of chips. At the first groan he paused, looked toward the leaning crown, and then kept cutting. The tree groaned again, tipped forward slowly, picked up momentum, and fell with a crash that was out of place in the quiet.
	
The falling tree flushed a turkey from a thicket and it flew across the trail with the grace of a medicine ball. It lit in a tree, looking back and down at Rudd with a game bird’s look of perpetual outrage.
	
“Sorry,” Rudd said.
	
He thought of reaching for the Colt but didn’t. That would be greedy. 

He had plenty of rations.
	
He limbed and bucked the tree, stacking armload after armload of stove-sized logs under the sideboard.
	
Rudd dug in the pack and came out with a collapsible bucket that he carried to a stream that fed into the lake. This would be water for boiling and cooking—drinking water would be clean melted snow.
	
Rudd methodically arranged some of his gear on the sideboard and hung more on nails hammered by others—a place for everything and everything in its place. He blew himself lightheaded inflating a thin air mattress. He arranged his sleeping bag over the mattress. The last chore was cutting and lashing together some spruce boughs and sweeping the tilt’s floor cleanish. He looked around the room. It was now home—warm, secure and familiar with his things.
	
The sun was getting low, so he put on his headlamp. Rudd brought out a candle and used the multitool on his belt to fashion a holder from a rusty tin can he found in a corner. He used his mess kit pot to scoop water from the bucket and placed it on the stove to boil. He was famished. He pulled some of his MREs from the pack and arranged them side-by-side.
	
He chose the barbecue pork rib entrée and slashed the package open. While you knew what the entrée would be from the package, it was the unlisted side dishes, beverages, and desserts that were the surprises. One could barter and trade them in the field, or use them as currency in makeshift poker games. He’d once bluffed his way to a dozen coveted jalapeño cheese packets with a hand that read like a telephone number. He smiled at the memory of being pelted with his winnings by the losers.
	
He set aside the water-activated chemical heater, which heated food unevenly. He popped the entrée and the side dish bags into the pot of simmering water. He dipped his tin cup, added instant coffee and blew on it while his food heated. It was all he could do to keep from eating it cold, but he wanted to take his time, savor his meal and make the comfort last.
	
Rudd dumped both packages on a tin plate, mixed them and added Tabasco. He sat on his bunk and tried to eat slowly, but couldn’t and tore through the whole mess, mopping the plate with the bread. He burned the packaging, cleaned his mess kit and gave himself a birdbath.
	
He loaded up the stove with wood, undressed and rolled his parka into a pillow. He hung the headlight from a bedpost nail, blew out the candle and slid into his bag. The air mattress squeaked a little when he shifted his weight.
	
Clouds gathered, fading the light. Blue-gray altostratus soon covered the entire sky. The clouds would thicken and lower, he knew, and then it would snow.

                                                        ****

The storm rose and fell like a symphony, blowing from bass note to high shriek through the trees. The snow raced to the ground and the wind was its mad conductor, spinning wild measures of powder in every direction. 
	
The rifle shot sound of a breaking branch snapped him to and the driving snow stung his face and neck. It took him a few seconds to comprehend that somehow he’d gone out into the darkness in his long johns and wool socks. He was crouched in a combat stance, pointing the Colt at something that wasn’t there. He whirled around frantically in the darkness, thinking, you’ve done it now.
	
Rudd saw a lump of shadow and stumbled toward it. He clawed at the tilt’s door and pulled it open. He felt his way to the sideboard and lit the candle. 
	
The snow was melting from his hair and his clothes. He stripped, put on dry clothing and built up the fire until it roared. He left the candle burning and lay down on his bunk, rolling on his side so he could see its flame. When it burned down, he would light another. He did that for the rest of the night until he could see daybreak and snow no longer pelted the window like it wanted in.

                                                       ****

High pressure followed the storm and the next morning was icy clear, with sharp northwest gusts blowing the snow into drifts. He stayed in, feeding the stove and reading a cheap paperback to fill his head. After a few hours, it occurred to him to check the door to make sure he wasn’t drifted in. The door opened easily, the snow blown clear by the wind. He stood stooped in the doorway, taking deep breaths of the clean cold air, so cold it made his eyes water. Then he heard them before he saw them, the whistles, chattering and clicks of camp robbers—Canada Jays.
	
Rudd had always loved the noisy little corvids with dark-gray backs, gray hoods, and whitish underparts. Equal parts bold and greedy, a bit of bread would give you a parasitic companion for as long as you offered food.
	
Two of them hopped around in the branches of a tree across the trail, making a loud fuss. He retrieved some bagged jerky and held it out in his palm. They swooped across near his outstretched hand and arced back to cover, out and back, out and back, chattering all the while.
	
“Come on,” Rudd said. “It’s freezing.”
	
One fluttered near his hand, marking time with its wings. Rudd could feel the little downdraft it made, and he smiled. Finally, it perched on his fingertips, gripping with its tiny claws.
	
The bird snatched the jerky and zoomed off to stash it under some bark. Rudd tore off more and the second launched and glided in, grabbed its morsel and banked away. They kept it up until they’d carried off almost half a bag of jerky.
	
“That’s enough; I’m frozen,” he said, and pulled his head and shoulders in to close the door. Both jays dove straight toward him like strafing fighter planes, went past him into the tilt and perched on the ridgepole. They were eyeing his makeshift pantry on the sideboard.
	
“Oh, no,” Rudd said. “This is my bivouac. No roommates.” He waved his arms until they launched out the door.
	
He began his dinner ritual, again setting aside the chemical heater, and treated himself to an extra cookie.
	
He was already growing weary of MREs and thought how wonderful a freshly caught fish would taste, cooked like he’d learned from Blaschke, the kid from South Dakota. In the field, Blaschke would put a pan over hot coals and partially cook some slices of bacon. Then he’d lay gutted whole fish rolled in cornmeal in the pan and put the bacon on top to baste them. The fish came out crispy but moist inside while the bacon was well done but not burned.
	
One did not disturb Blaschke when he cooked, hunched in intense concentration over his pan. Preparing and cooking food correctly was his holy rite. They all had their holy rites. 
	
But tomorrow he would fish. He brought out his tackle to inspect it. All was in order but he would check again tomorrow. 
	
He banked the fire by dragging the coals to the front and packing the back of the stove with logs, lit the candle and slid into his sleeping bag. He would keep a candle burning through the night.

                                                      ****

In the morning he reinspected his tackle—the tip-up rigs with their braided line reels, his two-foot rod with freefall reel, a small metal box of lures, leaders and hooks, and a jar of salmon eggs. Nearer to home, live minnows would be the go-to bait, but he wasn’t near to home.
	
He packed up, strapped on his snowshoes, screwed together the metal ice spud that he’d use to chip ice and using it as a walking stick, set off for the lake.
	
Dawn had broken in a naked pink sky. The barred owl he’d heard calling earlier—who cooks for you, who cooks for you allll—went silent. The night shift was going to bed.
	
After twenty minutes of steady hiking, the trees opened up to a medium-sized lake to his left, while beyond it lay a frozen floodplain studded with dead trees. The wind had blown a few patches of ice clear of the heavy powder. He looked for open water at the shoreline and listened for the rumble of shifting ice. He stepped out into the snow. Not far off was a thirty-foot oval of clear ice. He walked slowly, one step and a pause, another step and a pause. He rammed the ice spud down with each step, testing, carefully testing. He heard and felt solid ice and moved forward.
	
The cleared section was black and smooth. He moved toward its center, stabbing again and again. There was no cracking or swaying as he shifted his weight forward. This would be a safe place.
	
Rudd dropped his pack and chipped a hole. He chipped a second hole several feet away, pacing himself so he wouldn’t sweat too much. He set his tip-up in one hole, baited the hook, let it sink and set the flag. He would slowly jig with the rod in the second hole.
	
After a while, something tapped his hook. He slowed his movement, gently moving the rod tip up and down with just his wrist. The fish hit again, then the line went slack as it backed away. Then it tapped again and took the bait. He slacked the line so it would get a mouthful, pointed the rod tip down at the hole and with a sharp wrist flick, set the hook.
	
The rod bent like a green twig as he reeled in the heavy fish. He stooped as its mouth showed in the hole, grabbed its bottom lip and pulled it clear. It was a trout. He lifted it to eye level to study it in the light. It was golden, with heavy black spotting like inlaid onyx, and it had the male’s broad red stripe running the length of its lateral line. Its mouth slowly opened and closed over his thumb tip and its gill covers rhythmically flapped. It shuddered once.
	
“No need to kill you,” he whispered. “I actually have plenty of food.”
	
He gently unhooked the fish, dropped the mangled bait into its mouth, and slid it back into the water, swishing it around to re-oxygenate its coral pink gills. The fish flicked its tail and took off.
	
His bare hands were numb. He pulled on his gloves and then remembered the tip up. The flag was up. He rushed over and snatched the line in hand over hand, but the lack of weight told him he had a bare hook and stolen bait. Long ago that would have annoyed him, but now it made no difference. Lakes were hungry country in winter, and somebody down there got a free lunch.
	
He had caught a fine fish and was content with that. He packed up and carefully made his way back to shore.
	
It was midmorning now, and while the wind was still gusting hard from the northwest, there was a weak warmth to the January sun.
	
There were other signs, seasonal signs—a Cardinal calling cheer-cheer! and a woodpecker in the distance frantically drumming on a log.
	 
Longer daylight, Rudd thought. They can tell, and then they tell me. All will be as it should.

                                                       ****

That night, Rudd lay in bed without the burning candle and watched the stars through his window. He’d never been able to see patterns and learn the constellations by name. They were just pretty points of light, but they were there, always. Looking at them reminded him that some things would always abide.
	
An occasional wind gust made a sound in the stovepipe like someone blowing across the top of an empty bottle. He was glad for the wind. There was something ominous in dead quiet. 
	
He wanted to think of things rather than float adrift in the dark—big things, important things that might matter in the long run. But nothing came. Just snippets of songs that played over and over, a running loop of past transgressions, and washed out still shots of those who had come and gone.
	
He would need to leave here eventually; he only had a few more days of rations. Perhaps he could stay forever.
	
He shucked himself from his sleeping bag, stepped to the sideboard and fumbled to light the candle.
	
After a while the music, recriminations, and images faded to black, and he slept.

                                                       ****

The next day broke into a cloudless blue sky. Rudd moved through his quotidian ritual of breakfast and cabin cleanliness. He would fish one more day and then pack out tomorrow. He wanted to touch another piece of living beauty.
	
The wind overnight swept the entire lake clean of the heavy snow, revealing a vast blue-black windowpane of ice. He chose a spot further along the shore, and scanned for flowing brooks that meant thin ice. He’d jig his smallest Daredevil. If that was a bust, he’d add a salmon egg to one of its barbs. No tip-up today—he didn’t feel like chopping extra holes.
	
Rudd stepped out onto the ice, reaching ahead to stab hard with the long ice spud. Every two steps he’d stab again. The spud made reassuring thuds when he brought it down. Good ice, thick ice.
	
A dozen steps later, he felt the ice sway under his feet and give way. His mind flashed air pocket; there’s a spring down there, and he whipped the spud across his chest horizontally to check his fall but it was no good. It smashed through with him and he was gone.
	
He instinctively inhaled as he felt the ice giving way and his pack was buoyant, but his bunny boots filled with water and they and the steel spud he held tightly dragged him down.
	
Rudd felt his boots scraping gravel as the current tugged him along and he looked up for daylight from the hole but couldn’t see anything but the dull glow of ice. He squatted and sprang up to break through, but he just bounced off the ice and sank back to the bottom. He jammed the spud upright in the gravel and using it for leverage sprang up again, rolling on his back as he ascended until his lips kissed the ice. He found the tiny pocket of air he had hoped would be there. He emptied his lungs in a blast, sucked in what air was there and sank again.
	
Three times he did this, but there was little air in the scattered pockets, and he was tiring. On the fourth push there was no air pocket. He sank, settled on his back and felt the gravel lightly scraping his backpack and his heels as the current ushered him along. He could hear the sing and ping of underwater echoes, and the grating of the spud as it trailed in his wake.
	
His lungs ached and his heartbeat was a slowing thud in his ears. Tiny bubbles escaped his nostrils and he watched them go up and disappear. The water didn’t seem that deep because he could see a whitish glow above him.
	
He drifted up against a glacial boulder sticking above the cobble. His eyes were open and he blinked because they hurt. The blue-gray blur of the water was turning yellow, then it started fading to black. His brain was screaming at him to breathe and he knew that in a few seconds, he would.
	
Instead of thinking of his mother, or seeing his life pass before his eyes, or crying out in his head for mercy to God or the gods as he thought people might, Rudd thought about George Patton, lying immobile in a hospital with a broken neck saying, Well, this is a hell of a way to die. From a car accident of all things, eh, General? I suppose that beats drowning while ice fishing because you forgot to tie a rope to a tree before you set foot on a strange lake alone in the middle of nowhere.
	
The blackness overtaking the yellow closed in to tunnel vision. He thought of an exhale, a breath, some burning pain and panicked flailing, then nothing but freedom or nothing but nothingness, which could be the same thing.
	
No. Not like this.
	
He rolled over and scrabbled up onto the boulder while still gripping the spud. He wedged it into a crack, crouched, and then heaved upward and his shoulders struck the ice. Down again and up. Again and the ice moved. Again, but he was much weaker this time. Again and for the last time because he had nothing left after this, pushing hard against the spud, bellowing out his last air in rage against the ice.
	
The ice cracked, heaved, and plates of it slid away with a sound like breaking dishes. His upper back emerged, then his head whipped up and he sucked in air in primal moans. Rudd pulled his arms free and brought both fists down again and again, smashing and kicking his way to the bank. He crawled halfway out into the snow and lay there, wild-eyed and gasping. He coughed and his lungs felt raw inside and he vomited pond water and heard himself laugh between gags. Alive. And lucky to have drifted toward shallows.
	
Above in the canopy, a flock of crows exploded in alarm. In the periphery, he caught a flash of red against the green and white as a cardinal fled.

He wanted nothing more than to sleep, right where he was.
	
Then he began to tremble, and then shake so violently he thought his ribs would crack and his teeth shatter. He shifted and his jacket made cracking sounds. It was already beginning to freeze and he was a long way from fire.
	
He struggled to his knees, then forced himself to stand. Water overflowed from his boots. He felt faint and dropped back to his knees.
	
He grabbed a sapling and hauled himself again to his feet.
	
Gotta walk, gotta walk, gotta walk. He staggered down the trail, watching his scuffed white boots, panting “. . . left . . . left, right, left” in a hoarse whisper. He staggered into a tree. He held onto it, blowing steam, and then pushed off . . . left . . . left, right, left.
	
He caught a pine root with his toe and pitched forward onto his face. He rolled onto his side, forced himself up again and tasted blood in his mouth.
	
Left, right, left, right. He was shaking convulsively, and his clothing crackled with each drunken step. His eyes were tearing badly and blinding him, so he wiped his face and realized his fingers didn’t want to bend. Something spoke to him, sneering that he was going to drop, freeze, and be animal food.
	
“Nope,” he whispered and lurched forward, stumbling in a zigzag, left, right, left, right.
	
He reached the path between the trees that led up to the tilt and fell onto his side, heaving and snorting like a dying horse. He growled through his teeth, rolled, pushed himself up and crawled. He made it to the door and gripped the door bar with clawed hands and pulled himself up. He couldn’t pull the bar loose. He felt a wash of resentment and pity, seeing himself sitting with his back against the barred door, dead.
	
Not yet, he thought. He kept thumping at the door bar feebly from beneath with his forearm, until it finally popped loose, and he fell into the tilt.
	
Rudd crawled to the stove, which was almost out, hugged it and heard his clothes hiss and could smell the steam. He pulled himself upright to the full pot of warm water, thinking warm the core, and stuck his face in and drank, making sounds like a cow at a trough. He thought of the wood cache beneath the sideboard and realized he couldn’t manage opening the stove. He tugged at zippers and catches with his teeth and the heels of his hands until he was stripped, his thawing clothes making dirty puddles on the floor.
	
I can still die in here.
	
He looked back at his neatly arranged supplies on the sideboard, did a St. Vitus dance to them, and picked up an MRE heater with the heels of his hands. He tore it open with his teeth, took it to the stove, sucked up water from the pot and spit it into the heater. He filled four of them and closed them, seeing the condensation building inside. He carried them in his teeth to his bunk and dropped them into his sleeping bag, then struggled into the bag and lay shaking facing the south window.
	
He felt himself dozing, and then sinking into sleep. Or dying. He wasn’t sure which, but he’d done all he could do.

                                                       ****

His hands woke him during the night in the dark cabin. They had thawed while he slept. Now they throbbed and burned enough to make him cry out.
	
He could bend his fingers a little and crawled from his bag to the floor. He could see his breath in the moonlight.
	
He clawed at the bedpost where he knew his headlamp would be, gripped the strap in his teeth and pushed at the switch with the knuckle of one stiff finger until it clicked on.
	
Rudd knee-walked to the stove, fumbled open the latch, wincing at the touch of metal on his flesh. He rolled logs to the stove and crammed it full, venting it wide so it would catch.
	
He got to his feet gingerly, afraid to put weight on them. They were tender, that was all. Thank you, bunny boots.
	
He found his first aid kit on the sideboard and dumped it. He picked out a small plastic tube marked Oral Transmucosal Fentanyl Citrate, chewed it open and took out something that looked like a large cotton swab that smelled vaguely like strawberries. Fentanyl lollipop, GI issue, something from another place, another time. He drank more water, put the swab under his tongue and fell back on his bunk.
	
Rudd lay there and tried to belly breathe through the pain. Pain. Always pain. Upstairs in the head or downstairs in the body. Stop, now, fool. Get real. You fell into a freezing lake and you’re hypothermic with some frostbite. That’s all.
	
He tried to flex his fingers. If I can get past this, I can get them to work again. The swab was kicking in and the pain was fading. A drowsy contentment came over him like someone gently covering him with a silken sheet.
	
You’re going to get out of here, a voice said. He slumbered off unsure if he had spoken aloud.

                                                          ****

The next day, his hands were the color of candle wax but the pain was tolerable. He soaked them in lukewarm water and flexed them between soaks until he felt they’d be useful. By the end of the following day, he had to wear his gloves to manage around the tilt, but there were no blisters, no blackening flesh, no dropping fingernails.
	
At dawn on the next day he packed his gear. He’d let the stove go out overnight. He cleaned the ashes out and laid a new fire for the next visitor. He had little food left, so he dropped a half dozen books of waterproof matches on the sideboard. He inspected the interior one last time, closed and barred the door, replaced the bear guards and fished the bucket back onto the stovepipe.
	
Rudd tightened his snowshoe bindings, shouldered his pack and trudged away to the west with the rising sun throwing orange light ahead of him. The long tree shadows pointed the way home. When he got back, perhaps then it would be time to tackle the big things. Perhaps.
	
He stopped a little ways up the trail and circled back to the tilt with the sun full on his face. He dug in his pocket, pulled out a piece of bread and crumbled it onto the snow in front of the door. Then he turned and left.
	
The two camp robbers silently glided down from the trees and followed him for a while. Then they banked back, landed and began eating the gift he had left.

                                                   THE END