The Noon(an) Siren..

Overheard at the bait shop...

"Hey, Bob! You look like you seen a ghost!"

"May as well have, but I swear this is true!

I was goin' down the river Saturday lunchtime, right there where it's a half a mile wide. Thinking about that new spot where I almost caught that big old bass last week. All of a sudden, up under the bluff, I heard a bunch of barking dogs, right ahead of me. As I come around this point, I seen them- two of them, big old hounds, standing on a rock ledge right under the water.

And on the rocks right near them was a coyote! It was growling and snarling at the dogs, but they couldn't get to him. They was trying, though- one of them swum around the rocks trying to climb up from behind, I thought the coyote was going to jump on his head and drown him!

And then come the part you won't believe! Down the cliff, climbing hand over hand and sliding when she could, come the prettiest girl I've seen in a long time! She was dressed in tall riding boots and she had a pistol on her hip, and she was trying to get to those dogs and help them catch that coyote!

Well, that wasn't going to happen. Mr. Coyote saw that girl, and me, and glanced up like he figured there would be a helicopter after him next. So he give us all a dirty look and slipped up the rocks like a puff of smoke, there wasn't anything behind him but a trail of river water.

But that left the girl and the dogs stuck on the river. She might have been able to climb out, but the dogs wouldn't have and it was too cold for them to swim far enough to where they could get out on their own.

About then, that girl seen me. And she started waving for me to come in, just like one of them Si-reens form the old mythology times!

Well of course I had to try, and so I run the boat up close enough to Peisinoe that she could lift the dogs and herself in. She told me that a whole bunch of dogs and people were hunting the coyote, and she had a horse up on the top of the bluff.

One of them dogs must have rode in a boat before, he just stood up front with a big old smile on his face!

I carried them down a bit past the bluffs where they could scramble onto the bank, and up they went."


"Bob, you need to stick to them old stories of yours about six foot catfish. Because ain't nobody going to believe that one."

(N.B., I never actually spoke to the fisherman, but the events happened in my presence as described. These hounds are very willing to face water, caught one in a pond two weeks ago. Perhaps next season they will have to copy the French and carry a boat along.)