Ficlets

the rickydan

Dan and I were down by the river fishing for crawdads with gummy worms. They love gummy worms. We’d loop’em on a string and dangle the string in the water, and we’d catch bucketfuls of crawdads.

It always smelled so fresh on the Stan, a gentle breeze shaking the reeds, releasing danders and seeds. And it was so quiet in the valley, just me and Dan laughing and the lazy summer river.

And carrying our plastic pails for crawdads and water, and our canvas bags that day, we heard something different, loud, rustling, frantic, driving through the straw-gold valley. Hopping like a hornless jackalope, larger than a bunny, smaller than a deer, a brown doe of an unknown species had graced this peaceful shore.

And we, with our strings and sticks, we’d scared the hell out of it. I stared at Dan, and Dan stared at me. At first it was barely more than a gasp, then a chuckle, and wordlessly together we nearly fell over laughing.

We recovered and we named it, of course, a rickydan. What else could it be?

View this story's 2 comments.