Houdini - Part 2

Houdini was gone. Completely gone. Nowhere on the property gone. My dad ordered all us kids into the back of one of our battered pickups and we took off. There were four kids in the bed, dressed in motley assemblage of work clothes, unbathed, unshaven (in the case of my brothers), and more or less half asleep. A banjo and a shotgun would have completed the picture perfectly.

We drove around the area, occasionally stopping to search a thick patch of scrub, for the better part of an hour. We eventually came to one of the larger meadows not far from our place and were sent out to comb the area.

I wandered into the thicket and half-heartedly looked around. After a few minutes, I happened to notice a flash of white. It was Houdini. I looked around, but no one else was in sight. Houdini was moving quickly through the brush (sheep are fast when they need to be), so I did what any 10-year-old would do. I gave chase.

There have been many great hunts mythologized throughout history. There are stories of courageous hunters who dared the elements, who risked life and limb to track and ensnare their prey. Hunters who knew their quarry could turn at any moment and then they themselves would be the hunted.

Now, I may have been a small boy in rocket ship pajamas chasing a sheep, but this was one such hunt. I chased Houdini through and around bushes, up and down hills, across ravines and boiling lava, through the lairs of snarling wolves and incontinent bears, and through the very earth itself.

Well, obviously not, but it was a hell of a chase.