LUKE: Mighty Hunter

This is Luke. I've known him a while now, like for about 23 of his 26 years of life, or so. It's possible we've known each other longer, in an ethereal sense, as our parents were friends long before either of them were married or making children (i.e. us). We've walked different paths, but share myriad memories in our childhood. He was my brother's "official" best friend as a kid, and his sister was mine. Anyways, the trail didn't suit him, and he ended up camping with We Who Did Not Hike.


The trail difficulties may or may not have had anything to do with his hobbies:

His hobbies, by the way, are among those paths I didn't take, in case you were wondering. We do, however, share similarly fashionable tan lines.

In honor of our many shared camping memories, I assigned him an important job (Remember the previously mentioned but undisclosed purpose of my steam table pan? Get ready, this is it.): To use his amazing engineering skills to capture one of the little ground squirrel critters that were eating our leftover crumbs around camp. I offered him my multi-purpose steam table pan, and some cord, and he found an appropriate stick.

The first few tries were unsuccessful, but we learned that leftover spaghetti drew them quicker than sugar puff cereal. Eventually we secured one of the critters. I wanted to capture the victorious moment like those big game shots in Cabela's catalogs, but for some reason this just doesn't measure up. I think it was the lighting. Or maybe my lack of a Nikkon D80 DSLR.

It took several attempts to get a shot of the actual live beast (we did catch-and-release. We had plenty of food in camp as it was.); they are very fast! I did find one photo which shows a hint of the critter:

I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of Luke's less-than-manly reaction upon releasing the first captive, who scurried right towards him before disappearing in the bushes. THAT would've been one for Cabela's.