The storm’s energy picks up as the night wears on. Penny-sized snowflakes try to punch holes in the side of my truck as I shift restlessly in my sleeping bag. The extra dose of Melatonin doesn’t take hold, I know I’m in for a long night. The anticipation is high, and it’s also the mother of sleepless nights.

The rut is on in Wyoming and the storm is supercharging it. I listen to the far-off bugles that sound off every so often with frequency enough to pull open my heavy eyes.

I’m surrounded by a cacophony of sounds, and they all have their natural place. Except for one.

There it is again. It sounds like something running through my truck’s engine. It’s barely noticeable, but with my head a mere few inches from the truck’s bed, it is amplified by the resonation through the metal (I use that term loosely on modern trucks).

With little else to do, I run different scenarios through my head on what can be the source of that sound. All of them involve me leaving my warm sleeping bag, getting dressed, and walking out in the pounding snow. If there were a bugling bull at the end of the trail, I’d be up in a heartbeat. But the unfamiliar sound that is sure not to end in giant antlers and backstraps have me debating enacting the age-old adage of “If I ignore it it will go away.”

After pinpointing it down from an alien knocking on my door and several other highly intelligent scenarios, I come to the hypothesis that a porcupine crawled up into my engine block to get out of the storm and steal any leftover warmth the engine might provide.

The thought of popping the hood to see the beady eyes of an inverted pincushion, pissed off at the intrusion and wanting to prove the theory that porcupines can shoot their quills as accurately and rapidly as Annie Oakley could her rifle. To hell with the scientists that say otherwise, I don’t see them standing next to me ready to go to war with this trespasser. I’m on my own and my brain is in idiot overdrive.

An idea pops in my sluggish head.

I get dressed and hop out in the ensuing storm in my long underwear. In the cab of the truck I kick her over and redline the engine. I figure 5.7 liters of Hemi should get the point across to the intruder that he’s not welcome in these parts.

I decide not to risk it and take it one step further and while I’m at it kill two birds with one stone. About a mile up the road, and a very washboard road at that, is a patch of timber where I can park to get out of the storm. Rattle the little bugger out of his hiding spot and find a place to sleep with a little protection, that’s a win-win.

I rev the engine and set off at a meteoric pace, rattling the fillings out of my teeth and hopefully jarring the freeloader out in the process.

I careen into the little parking lot in the timber and cut the engine to sit in silence. Huge sentinels of pine form a formidable wall, blocking the wind but allowing peaceful snowflakes to saunter down from the sky and create a calming blanket.

I sit and listen. Silence. Beautiful, beautiful silence.

The deed has been done.

With that, I pop open the truck cap’s window and crawl into the inviting embrace of a -20 degree, luxurious synthetic hug. I look at my watch’s glow, only a few short hours until I need to brave the elements again, but this time chasing rutting bulls, not imaginary critters. Might as well make the most of it and I close my eyes.

And as if on cue, comes a slight, “scratch, scratch” from somewhere in the realm of this hunk of metal I’m laying on.

My temper boils over. I could have been the brass section blaring their horns at a college homecoming game and it would not have been more obvious or loud to me.

I thrust my clothes on, frothing threats from my mouth about what I'm going to do to this trespasser when I get a hold of him. The Lord may have created every creature with a specific intent and purpose, but I’m almost sure he made this one by mistake and it was now my purpose to “remove” this sleep-sucking little beast from the Earth.

I slush through the snow in half-zipped clothes to find my weapon of choice in the nearby armory of the forest. A hefty stick is chosen and I pop the release on the hood as I prepare for battle.

As the hood’s spring sends it skyward, I jump back and ready myself for a wall of needles hurtling my way.

Feeling no immediate pain in the arm covering my eyes, they always aim for the eyes by the way, don’t let the scientists tell you otherwise, I peer into the cavity holding my engine block, looking for the culprit.

Sitting on what looks like an eagle’s nest perched on top of the truck’s battery is a wide-eyed, what appears to be a guinea pig.

As if his feet are welded to the battery, he’s frozen in place, entranced by my headlamp.

Now I’m a hunter and I’ve taken plenty of lives in the name of my requirement for sustenance. It’s just the way of it and there is no guilt on how or why I do it.

But this little thing. I mean… it's just not a fair fight.

I place the stick next to him and with both hands start the stick in a slow arc out towards the woods. The little rascal careens through the air like a lacrosse ball being passed upfield.

I’m a nice guy, but rent was due and he wasn’t paying. The woods of Wyoming would have to take in this immigrant, whether he had the right paperwork in place or not.

I started to clear out the dinner plate-sized condo he decided to make in the engine cavity and the mystery of where he came from started to piece itself together. Mixed in the nest were shreds of Starbucks wrappers, torn-up pages of kids coloring books, tissue, and even small shreds of junk mail.

Either this little guy had a passport on him that I missed while sending him on his one-way flight back to mother nature or he’s been stowed away with me for some time now.

Then it all clicked. Two weeks ago at the base of the mountains, I was hunting bighorn sheep, just finishing the hunt, my hunting partner was loading up the back of the truck and found a full garbage bag shredded. A couple of days later he informed me he killed a sizable packrat that had been making a home of his truck as well.

That was two weeks ago. Two weeks!

I must have picked this little fella up at the same place, the two of them deciding to split up and later write to each other on how their adventures were going.

This packrat traveled over two hundred miles back to Denver with me, went through three automatic car washes, braved the one-hundred-degree summer under a black hood, and foraged through my garbage for food and nesting materials.

Then, it took a ride with me to help the aforementioned hunting partner pack a mule deer out of the mountains of Colorado and then a trip through a snowstorm to the windswept lands of Wyoming.

My respect for this not-so-little packrat kept mounding up as I thought of the numerous times he should have abandoned ship, but like a true captain, apparently, he was going down with the ship.

Ride or die.

This was one impressive animal I thought to myself. I may have just unleashed a veritable badass into this unsuspecting swath of Wyoming’s wilderness.

I lay back in my sleeping bag with a sense of reverence. A couple of hours of well-earned sleep came, but I remember waking with vivid dreams of visiting this place in a few years with a packrat being carried down the middle of the road, now king of the forest, commanding untold millions of forest dwellers to do his bidding.

I better get this hunt done and get the hell out of here, there’s no telling how wrathful he could be. I shivered and decided to kill the first legal elk I saw.

// Fred Bohm