Typical Day
It's 6:00AM as Ranger Bearbait's beat-up jeep rattles down a twisting road. As he sips his coffee, he spots a deer and her faun watching him tentatively from a patch of blooming mountain laurel. The fragrant aroma of the laurel fills his jeep, and the mamma deer nuzzles her faun's white-spotted fur. Bearbait can't help but smile inside.
Now this is peace, he thinks. This is what it's all about. It's like I live inside the movie Bambi.
BOOM!
The jeep backfires, and the deer leap across the road in terror. Ranger Bearbait's jeep careens from side to side, spraying dust and gravel. He narrowly misses the mother deer as she and her faun disappear into the trees.
That was almost too much like Bambi, he thinks, breathing a sigh of relief. Gotta get this clunker fixed next paycheck. Or maybe the next one...lotta bills back at home waiting to be paid. Even though he's a senior ranger, he still has trouble making ends meet at times.
The parking lot is already packed with buses and minivans when he arrives at the information center. This is no surprise to Bearbait. He's been at this for twenty-five years, and he knows what the park is like on a holiday weekend. When he left the house, his wife had been complaining about having to once again go to the Fourth of July picnic alone.
"Let one of those summer newbies deal with it today," she'd said, referring to the young rangers who were only hired on for the busy summer season.
"You know they'd be lost without me," he'd said with false lightness, hoping to clip the argument short.
"Hmph," she'd shot back before storming into the bedroom.
The truth is Bearbait feels sorry for the young rangers and doesn't want to stick them with all the work. They make less than half of what he does since they're lower on the totem pole, and they're only guaranteed a job for a part of the year. Also, if anything happened, and someone experienced wasn't around....
An hour after arriving, Ranger Bearbait stands in front of a crowd of gasping visitors with a snake twined around his fingers. No matter how many times he tries to explain that kingsnakes aren't poisonous, one freckled little girl in the front row won't stop squealing.
"Don't worry. They're constrictors...."
Squeal!
"They kill their prey by squeezing them...."
SQUEAL!
"They eat venomous snakes. Swallow them whole...."
SQUEEEEEEEAL!
"I guess that factoid wasn't the most soothing," he sighs to himself as the girl scurries out of the education pavilion.
"The brochure said there'd be a baby deer. How dare you scare my daughter...with that...that monster," huffs the girl's mother.
"They aren't monsters. They're a valuable part of the ecosystem, and—" he tries to explain, but the woman ignores him and chases after her daughter.
These In-Touch with Wildlife sessions are one of Ranger Bearbait's favorite duties, but they can be challenging. Many visitors have only seen wild animals on TV—if that—so the little girl's reaction, though extreme, isn't totally uncommon. At the end of his talk, Bearbait is happy that many audience members have the gumption to come up and touch the snake.
"Snakes are cool," grins a snaggle-toothed girl as she gently brushes its smooth scales.
The rest of Ranger Bearbait's day flies by in a blur. The park is swarming with visitors, and it seems like he has to be everywhere at once. The picnic area in particular requires him to put on his frowny face and crack down.
First, there's the family who thinks it's okay to leave their trash on the grass. Then, there are the teenagers who think it's cool to start a weenie-roasting fire outside of a designated fire pit. Then there's the little boy who Bearbait catches hiding cheeseburgers in strategic locations around his parent's campsite.
"I'm sorry, son, but this will attract bears."
"But I wanna see bears!" the kid protests.
"Nah...I don't think you do. Haven't you seen the end of Grizzly Man?"
"No...."
Ranger Bairbait shakes his head. "It ain't pretty."
As twilight creeps in through the trees, the ranger breathes a little easier. It's starting to sprinkle, and the visitors are fleeing in droves. " Maybe I can leave a little early. Make the wife happy. Catch the finale of the fireworks."
But then he hears a frantic voice crackle through his walkie-talkie....
"Uh, Ranger Bearbait...we got a lady here who says she can't find her kid...."
A bolt of crooked lightning rips across the sky, and Ranger Bearbait settles himself in for some overtime.
Six hours later he's slogging his way through the trees in the pouring rain, looking for the same squealing girl from that morning's In-Touch with Wildlife. Water streams off of his wide brimmed hat as his flashlight beams up the dark mountain slope. Suddenly, he hears a faint cry through the thunder. His boots slip in the mud as he runs toward the sound.
"Up here," squeals the girl who is clinging to a high branch of a swaying tree.
"Come down!" he calls. "I'm here. You'll be all right!"
"I saw a snake!" she screams. "It's still down there! I know it! They're everywhere!"
"Here's another fact for you," cries the ranger. "Snakes also climb trees!"
An hour later, the little girl is wrapped in a blanket and sipping cocoa. Her mother won't stop thanking Bearbait for his help, which is something of a relief as the ranger was imagining the park with a whopping lawsuit on its hands.
"My little girl keeps saying she wants to be a ranger when she grows up," croons the mother.
The ranger smiles warmly and says, "To be a ranger, you have to be ready for anything. Sometimes it's fauns, and sometimes it's snakes."