Young Writers Society

"Bob's Bad Idea"

Bob was holding his breath. Being frozen in place wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He remembered from his field training to “be the bush” ... “be the bush,” that was the mantra. He knew if he moved now all this day’s hard work would be lost, what with just about every animal in the whole herd watching him now and he with this nasty little tick that showed up whenever he got nervous.

By this time the whole herd of gazelles were watching the bush Bob was hiding in with laser beam intensity. They had never seen a bush with a twitchy eye before, so of course they where curious. They knew the bush couldn’t be hiding a predator. No predators: lion or leopard that they had heard of ever showed up with a nervous tick, except maybe the hyenas..... You just never knew about hyenas.

The sneeze just came out of nowhere, like that snowball thrown at the back of your head from behind the dormitory. One moment your minding your own business, watching some girls - I mean gazelles, and WHACK your head explodes... just like that. Of course no girl - I mean gazelle, was going to hang around and wait for you to pry yourself off the ground, so they could figure out whether you where harmless or not, so off they all scattered in every direction.

Bob started back towards the encampment, defeated. He still had the memory of ice trickling down his neck, but of course there was no ice; it was one hundred and fourteen degrees in the sun. He hadn’t seen any ice for three weeks. Some would have gone down real nice about now.

Back at base camp the other field biologists had already returned and were at various stages of report writing. As Bob trudged into camp, all the other biologists turned to watched him plod by. One of them, a little female named Becky came over to Bob and asked how his observations had gone. Bob mumbled something about twitchy predators and something about the sun being in his eyes, and crept into his tent slamming the flap behind him. Becky just stared at the tent flap a moment longer and then returned to finish collating her field notes, already copied in triplicate.... with foot notes.

Bob sat on his cot, thinking. Why was this field work so hard? The other

biologists didn’t seem to have problems counting their animals. They seemed to be able to sneak right up on their wildebeests or warthogs or whatever it was they where watching at the moment. But Bob was always having problems approaching his target animals. They would inevitably see him or smell him or hear him lurking about in the undergrowth. It just wasn’t fair. He could understand it if he moved around a lot - well he did have that nasty twitch. OK, what about smelling him? Well, it had been three weeks since he had a shower, but none of the other biologists had bathed either. So somehow that made him feel a little better. What about hearing him? He always tried to be as quiet as a mouse pissing on a cotton ball. What about that sneeze today?- You know, sometimes a sneeze is just a sneeze. So with nothing else for it, Bob resolved himself to try even harder.... to be the best dammed “Field Biologist” he could be!

There came a soft, muffled knock on his tent flap.

“Come in,” said Bob, with a renewed sense of purpose.

Becky stepped in through the tent flap. She was carrying a tin dish with what

could only be described by the legumes ensconced thereon as... bean hell.

“I brought you something to eat,” said Becky .

Bob hadn’t realized it before but he was famished. Scaring and traumatizinggazelles all day long was, after all, hard work. Becky sat down beside Bob on the cot and handed him the plate of “Pinto Purgatory.”

Bob dove into the plate like Greg Lugainus. His score for technical merit would have been higher but for the large off center splash of his entry. Never the less, Bob hoovered the plate clean and set it down by his feet.

“Oh, and here,” said Becky proffering one of two, cold, glistening beers. Bob was awe struck.

“Where did you get these beers?” asked Bob, with not a little wonder.

“Oh, well, the supply truck arrived and they had brought a cooler with these in it for the Uber Meister, and when I said I wanted the beer to cook some Maryland blue crabs in, the porter just smiled and handed these two over and waved goodbye.

“.....So where are the blue crabs?” asked Bob looking around the tent, the baked beans being now only a fond memory.

Becky paused and looked at Bob in utter disbelief. “What?” she said.

“The crabs, you said something about crabs, right?” said Bob getting a bead on the crux of the matter.

“Bob, there are no crabs.” said Becky.

“Are you sure, because I’m sure I heard something about crabs”.

“Bob,.....Forgedaboudit”, said Becky, taking the still unopened beer from Bob’s hand and storming out of the tent.

Bob gazed at the still fluttering tent flap and wondered if she was going off, to get the crabs. When Becky hadn’t returned after some minutes, Bob came to the slow realization that he wasn’t going to get any crabs that night.

The next day’s work started well before dawn with a meeting of all researchers with their supervisors. Bob stood at the back of the group getting his assignment, it was the gazelles ..... again. Bob walked off to fetch his backpack with his lunch, notebook, water, and lots of sun screen. He imagined the gazelles all knew him by sight by now, and probably laughed and made cheap gazelle-researcher jokes behind his back.

Bob wandered off through the bush as the dawn glowed with new promise.

Bob was moving quietly, (for him) to his assigned area. The same area where the day before, he was trying to sneak up on the , up until that point, oblivious gazelles. By all the documented research he had ever read, gazelles where the “Forest Gumps” of antelope world. His research supervisor had given him the gazelles to get his “feet wet .” After three weeks he still hadn’t got an accurate count on the gazelle population in his

area, let alone doing any real cutting edge research.

Bob moved out onto the savanna. It struck him as rather odd that he hadn’t seen any ungulates of any kind yet. It wasn’t until Bob was quite far out onto the plane when the reason finally became apparent. The reason slowly scratched it’s way to the surface of his mind like the way a mouse scratches to get out of a cellophane package of crackers, lost at the back of the pantry. There, under a lone and very desiccated tree, was a very attentive pride of lions, watching him intently. Bob froze.

“Be-the-bush...Be-The-Bush... BE-THE-BUSH,“ was all his panic stricken mind could shriek.

The lions, for their part, had just finished a rather large brunch of gazelle, so they had no intention of leaving the shade to chase down another “Forrest Gump”. They all just laid there in the shade and watched the field biologist sweat and twitch.

“He must have something in his eye,” they all thought, the way it was twitching like that. One of the younger and therefore slightly less comatose lions winched himself from the ground and started to saunter, nonchalantly, over towards the, by now completely freaked out biologist. The young lion meandered over to where the biologist stood frozen in place. It occurred to the young lion that the biologist was rather good at this being frozen in place business. He must have had allot of practice.

So, with what could only be described, (for lions), as a very mischievous grin, he walked up to the biologist and put his nose into Bob’s crotch and took a very large sniff.

Now, the panic that Bob felt exploded beyond any normal, every day kind of

terror to that place where that calm acceptance of ones fate endows a sort of objective reason. Bob had never heard of this kind of behavior in lions before. He had read that when confronted with lions, (if you survived the initial encounter), chances are sort of good that you may live to tell the tale. Since he was still standing and the lion was only reconnoitering his nether-regions, he figured he had at least half a chance of coming out

of this, at least mostly alive. However, this new found confidence was badly shaken when the lion perusing his private parts suddenly became noisily ill and threw-up half chewed gazelle, all over Bob’s new field biologists boots. Bob could have handled even this until the same lion started into retrieving his lost lunch like a rat terrier on a pair of flip-flops.

Bob fainted dead away.....

.....Bob awoke from a dreadful dream, that a rat terrier was busy eating his flip-flops while his feet were still in them. Bob opened his eyes very slowly and gazed around. He was lying flat out, on his back, in some tall grass and all around him where gazelles. Hundreds and thousands of gazelles. Large

gazelles and small gazelles; huge male gazelles with long spiral horns and with lots of girl gazelles hanging around and gazing at them..... longingly. Many more smaller, wimpy looking gazelles hanging around the edges of the herd, gazing in towards the macho gazelles at the center..... longingly. He had hit the motherlode of gazelles. Bob eased out his official field biologists note book from his day pack lying on the ground beside him and started scribbling down observations furiously. Bob took notes like he

never took notes before. After about three hours of Bob’s hi-speed note taking the herd moved off in search of more interesting grass to eat. Bob got up off the ground and headed back to base camp. .....Triumphantly!

Bob strode into base camp, an Alpha Male. All the other field biologists would be jealous. Bob looked upon these lesser biologists with disdain . He was lord over all he surveyed. Bob strode up to Becky, who was talking with some other lesser biologists. Bob thanked her, in his most manly voice for her thoughtfulness yesterday, and strode away without even a glance backwards.

Becky stopped talking to the other biologists in the group when Bob strode up. He was different, somehow. More manly.

“Well,” she thought, “he had nowhere to go but up.” Becky couldn’t help but feel that she had, somehow miss-judged Bob. That there was more to him than he let on. But, in the final analysis, he was still a very odd boy.

Bob started to copy all his field notes. There were a lot of them. He didn’t realize he had taken so copious a quantity of notes. Bob, being out of practice, took a long time transposing them into English, annotated with foot notes, and collated to boot.

He was feeling good. He was feeling fine. He had looked a lion right in the puss and not flinched. Then the full realization about the lions came back to him like the Newfoundlandian tide.... He had to figure a way around the lions.

“You just can’t keep walking up on them and expect to get away with it,” he

thought. Having faced these fearsome predators and prevailed, he figured he knew as much as anyone, (still alive that is) on how to do research on them. YES, that is it! He would apply for a grant to study the lions on his next rotation in country.

Since this was the last full day of research in the field, and since he had had such a great field trip today, (except for the part with the lions). Bob decided to take the evening off and enjoy himself a little. So after handing in his superbly fashioned field report to his supervisor, Bob strolled on over to the mess tent. It didn’t bother Bob one bit that the field report received only a cursory glance and a grunted “its about time” from his supervisor. No doubt the poor man was overworked having to hold the hands and wipe

the noses of all those other, lesser biologists whose work was barely fit to line a parakeet’s cage.

Upon entering the Mess tent Bob looked around for Becky. He thought he saw her leaving the tent, with another research biologist..... by the back door..... in a hurry.

“I guess she was tired and wanted to make an early night of it before heading home tomorrow,” Bob thought to himself.

Bob sauntered over to the food bar to grab some grub. There wasn’t much to choose from; some stale trail mix, some old bread from four days ago, a little gazelle jerky, and some very questionable looking melon. Bob opted for the trail mix and jerky. The porter behind the bar handed him a bottle of “aquafina” that he had just finished refilling from a rusty, fifty five gallon drum standing behind the bar.

Bob looked around the almost deserted mess tent. There were a few scrawny looking female biologists, crouching over a table in the corner in very deep conversation. A group of noisy male biologists making a display for this one hot botanist named Jasmine something or other.

At a table in the center of the tent, all alone, sat the German Bio-physicist Gretchen. Now, Gretchen was a large woman. Not the fat and flabby kind of large from eating junkfood and watching “Jerry Springer” all day long, but the twelve generations of pulling Papa’s plow kind of large .

“Zo, I heard you vinnaly got your gazelles,” Gretchen said with a twinkle in her eye.

Bob, still feeling he was master of his universe, strode over and sat down in the offered chair beside Gretchen.

“Yep Gretch, I sure did. You should have been there. Guess its ‘all good things to those who wait’,” said Bob around a mouthful of stale trail mix.

“I zink you are right” said Gretchen with a knowing smile.

Bob was, just then wondering what it was that she knew, when she said.

“Vhy don’t you come back to my tent und tell me all about it, I have zome

schnitzel und zome ‘Yeagermeister’, Ve could zelibrate.”

So, seeing the writing on the wall, and not having many other options open to him just then, Bob said, “Sure, why not.” That schnitzel was starting to sound really good!

On the plane ride back to the States, Bob put together the grant proposal for his next research project. - the one with the lions. It felt good to still be master of his universe even with what happened with Gretchen. The memory was still kind of foggy , what with all the schnitzel and "Yeagermeister.” He remembered something about a harness and something else about plowing the lower forty, or something like that. He just couldn’t remember it, clearly. He woke up this morning, in his own tent, with the mother of all hang-overs. Like the time when he and some of his grad school buddies went down to Tijuana for the day, He couldn’t remember much of that day either.

Bob wanted to try to observe lions at close quarters, in safety. Bob thought that the safety part Should be important, so he thought up and designed a “manually operated observation vehicle” , or MOOV. Basically it was nothing more than a giant hamster ball. The idea was to climb into this spherical lexan ball through a hatch, lock yourself in and just walk around inside this ball right up to the predators without worrying about ending up as some lion’s lunch. It all looked great on paper, now all he needed to get

was research funding and he was off.

Bob sent the grant application to the National Geographic Society along with his drawings and funding request, and sat back to wait. At the National Geographic Society’s offices in Washington DC. Bobs request landed on the desk of Manuel K Lutz. Manuel, being prone to nearsightness and constantly being the butt of all manner of practical jokes perpetrated by all the pranksters in the back offices at the National Geographic Society , decided to get a little pay back. These goofy funding requests jokes were getting out of hand, So Manuel forwarded the request for funding approval to his supervisor who, being half in the bag at the time, signed it and promptly forgot about it. Manuel chuckled to himself, “Pay back was a

bitch.”

Bob was amazed when his grant approval arrived in the mail a few days later

along with a hefty check.

“Those fellows at the National Geographic Society where really on the ball.” Bob would later be overheard saying.

Bob ordered his “giant hamster ball”, that’s what he was calling it just then, from an obscure expedition outfitting company in Jersey City, New Jersey. After a few Emails back and forth and some initial reluctance on the part of the fabricator to warrant the device , not to mention the threats of legal action if the harassment didn’t stop. The project was finally sorted out and the device was delivered to his home. It was amazing how a six foot clear plastic hamster ball could fit into a such small case. Bob unpacked

the parts along with the assembly instructions, (in korean) and started in to building the ball......

.....Seven hours later,

he finally completed the entire frame work of one-full-panel, only eleven to go. But he felt he had a handle on the process now so it only took another eight hours to finish the entire ball. Bob wasn’t entirely happy about all the extra parts left over, but felt that was to be expected, considering his history with assembling Christmas presence..

When Bob had disassembled the Giant Hamster Ball and packed it away into its original “Official Giant Hamster Ball Carrying Case,” Bob found he needed two more suit cases and a smallish trunk to hold all the rest of the parts. However, packed was packed so Bob called his post doc. advisor , DR William S. Hurley and set up his research schedule.

It was a fortuitous turn of events that allowed Bob’s advisor to be present in

Africa at the same time doing research out of the same base camp. Dr. Hurley’s sub-specialty was African Elephant behavior. His sub-sub-specialty was African Elephant behavior as a function of communication and leisure time activities.

So biologist Bob and his research advisor Dr. Hurley winged their way back to

deepest darkest Africa.

Bob wanted to keep his research idea a secret for the time being, and his advisor agreed, not having the slightest interest in Bob’s research work. Dr. Hurley was mostly interested in his new research assistant Becky. Yes, the same Becky that teased Bob so mercilessly about the blue crabs on his last research assignment with the gazelles. But Bob wasn’t one to harbor hard feelings, forgive and forget, that was his motto.

The first evening at the base camp, Bob assembled his ball and rolled it onto the edge of the savanna with out anyone seeing him. He was getting pretty good at assembling the device by this time. So it only took three hours, and he ended up with even fewer parts leftover. That was a good thing.

Bob wandered into camp around dusk and saw Becky walking across the

commons. He waved and strolled over to her to say hi.

Becky waited somewhat distractedly for Bob to come over.

“Hey Beck catch any crabs lately,” said Bob with a playful grin.

All the other biologists walking by at this time stopped and looked directly at

Becky.... waiting for the answer.

Becky had apparently forgotten all about the crab fiasco , because she turned beet red and flew into her tent.

Bob felt sorry for her, she shouldn’t feel badly about teasing him about the blue crabs. He had, long ago, forgiven her.

Bob wandered over towards the mess tent. He saw Gretchen coming out with a new, young, virginal researcher in tow. Bob felt a sudden chill and remembered something about a harness and something else about plowing or something, he wasn’t sure. Bob very quickly lost his appetite and went back to his tent to lie down.

The next morning’s work started before dawn, as usual, Bob hiked over to his giant hamster ball, hidden in some bushes and push it out onto the savanna. At his chosen spot, Bob opened the hatch and climbed in, locking the hatch behind him. Bob started to walk.... He just started walking across the savanna. Thank goodness Bob had the foresight to leave lots of holes in the ball for ventilation. The ball was going to get pretty hot inside. Maybe he should have specified a dark tint to the lexan. Oh well we’ll save it for the next ball. The ball was rolling along quite nicely now, out across the open plain. This wasn’t nearly as hard going as he had feared. In fact he was barely breaking a sweat, of course it was only eight thirty five AM. Bob walked/rolled the giant hamster ball over to a scraggly tree and decided to wait in the shade. Bob didn’t have to wait long for his next field test. The test walked right out of the tall grass behind him. Bob turned very slowly to face his new guest. There, siting in front of him was the largest lion he

had ever seen. This shook Bob up a bit until he remembered that he was still sitting inside his ball.

The lion stood up and strolled up to the ball and gazed in like a fortune teller looking into his future. The lion soon left the way it had come.

“ The guys just are not going to believe this,” thought the lion as he ran back to get his buddies.

Soon the whole pride was gathered around the giant hamster ball with Bob inside, shaking and twitching and scribbling notes as fast as ever he could. The lions tried to get into the shade under the tree but here this thing was in the way taking most of the shade.

The largest alpha male lion wasn’t happy at finding this thing here and with one of those research biologists inside. He hadn’t slept well the day before and the Mate was always at him about going out and catching something to eat , not to mention the cubs where becoming a real pain, with all that wrestling and biting and pouncing on him when all he wanted was to get some rest. So it is somewhat understandable when the big alpha male lion walked around behind the ball and started pushing it with his head.

Bob was thrown forward off his collapsable “back pack/stool” . The balls motion combined with his weight falling forwards, propelled the ball right out from under the shade of the tree and out in front of a passing heard of elephants. The Alpha male lion laid down in the grass in the deepest part of the shade, now vacated by the ball, and proceeded to watch the show....

The leading cow elephant dodged out of the way of the ball as it rolled past and bumped into a young bull that was next in line. He thought someone had thrown the ball at him on purpose, so he kicked it back out of his way. A very young bull getting into the spirit of the game gave the ball a whack with his trunk and sent it careening back among the rest of the elephants in the heard....

....The melee which ensued can be better observed from above. Luckily DR Hurley along with his research assistant Becky and the cessna’s pilot where overflying the herd, taking a census and filming a segment for an upcoming, National Geographic Society Television Special about African elephant community dynamics.

They couldn’t believe what they where seeing, but there it was as plain as day! The elephants below appeared to be playing .....SOCCER ?

.......DR Hurley smelled an Emmy.

Epilogue:

Bob got out of the hospital in Mombassa two weeks later. Becky visited often when she wasn’t assisting DR Hurley .

DR. Hurley was nominated for an “Emmy” for the TV special, a “Pulitzer Prize”, for the new book on the leisure time activities of African Elephants, and a “Nobel Prize” for his cutting edge research into spontaneous game learning by elephants.

And the “National Geographic Society” was trying valiantly to keep it’s

association with the “ Giant Hamster Ball” as quiet as possible.

The End.