The Camping Trip that Wasn’t, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I stood up to peddle harder as the last half mile was steeper. I wished I had one of those new bicycles with gears to shift. When the advertisement said you sell to your neighbors, they didn’t remind you that your neighbors were two miles away, uphill.

At 12 years of age, I had embarked on my first venture as a salesperson. Lured by a flashy magazine ad, I was going to sell garden seeds and earn enough to purchase a pup tent. It sounded simple, I had a few neighbors, and they all had large gardens. And I had a large family. Grandma’s can always be depended on to buy stuff.

“And who are you selling them for?” Margaret asked.

What a dumb question, I thought. You think I would ride my old bike for two miles up that hill to sell them for somebody else.

“I am selling them for myself,” I said. “I am going to get a pup tent.”

“I thought you might be selling them for the Boy Scouts or Church or something,” Margaret explained.

This is going to be more challenging than I thought. She would donate to some group, but she was hesitant to help some kid achieve his goal.

“That is why I need a pup tent,” I explained. “I have to work at home so much, I don’t have time to join the Boy Scouts. So I have to go camping by myself.”

I thought that was a good comeback. Margaret knew I worked in the barn and in the fields. But then, she also knew my parents. And they would not deprive me of joining the Boy Scouts if that was what I wanted to do.

“I will buy a couple of packs of the peas,” Margaret said. “I don’t have my seeds yet, and it is probably close to the time to be planting peas.”

I figured I would have to come up with a better storyline if I was going to sell all these seeds. And tomorrow, I was going to go the other direction. There were only a couple of small hills on the way to Broadbent.

As the spring progressed, I did manage to sell the necessary allotment of seeds. Although, I would guess my mother bought more than she planned to buy. I placed my order for the pup tent and waited anxiously for its arrival.

I tore open the box when it did arrive. The tent was much larger than I expected. And it was heavier also. Made from heavy canvas, at least it would be durable. It would be difficult for me to carry along with a pack, that was for sure.

I quickly had it set up in the back yard. There was plenty of room for two people that were my size. You couldn’t stand up in it, but that was no problem in my view.

It rained the second day after I had pitched it in the backyard. It didn’t leak one drop, but it took three days to dry out.

Summer came, I planned a camping trip to the back of our 160 acres with my friend from up the river. Dana and I could easily carry the tent, sleeping bags, and my brother’s pack with all the necessary supplies.

We were all packed up and ready to head up the hill when Dad came out to wish us well.

“We are planning to go to the movie tonight,” Dad said. “You two can stay up the hill if you like, or after you set up camp, you can come back and go to town with us. I have a good flashlight, you could go back up the hill when we get home.”

What a dilemma, a movie was hard to pass up in the mid-1950s. Movies were really our only source of outside entertainment. My Dad liked to go to the movies, and we would go a couple of times a month. I knew that Dana did not go that often.

“What do you think?” I asked Dana.

“I think it would be a good idea,” Dana said. “We could go set up camp, come back and go to the movie, and then walk back up in the dark to sleep.”

“Okay, we will go to the movie,” I said to Dad. “We probably will be back in time so we can eat dinner before going.”

With that, we were off. The trek was not long, we crossed the upper fields and crawled over the fence at the pasture’s end. Then we followed the cat road along the creek until it turned up the hill to the burn.

The burn was where they had logged the timber and burned it over to make good pasture for the cows. It was a good-sized area and open so we could watch the deer and other animals.

We picked a spot on the old landing and set up the tent. We threw everything else into the tent and headed back to the house for dinner.

“We don’t want to be late,” I said. “Dad won’t wait for us.”

We hurried along and got to the house just as mom was setting the table for dinner.

“This is a whole lot better than eating that can of pork and beans you would be heating over a fire,” Dad said. “You never know what you are missing until you don’t have it.”

My older sister pulled the car into the garage and came rushing into the house.

“I just had a cougar run across the road in front me,” She said, trying to catch her breath. “I was right down there at the end of Herman’s field.”

Dana’s eyes were large, as we turned around and tried to see if anything was in the field, some half-mile distant. There was nothing there.

“Are you sure it was a cougar?” Dad asked.

“We should call Uncle Robert,” Mom said. “He might want to get his dogs on its track tonight.”

“Yes, I am sure it was a cougar,” Linda said. “It had a long tail, and it moved like it didn’t have a care in the world. Are you boys camping up on that hill tonight?”

“We are going to the movie first,” I said. “We already set up camp. We will walk up there when we get home after the movie.”

“Well, I sure would not be walking up on that hill tonight,” Linda said. “That cougar probably is headed right up the creek.”

“They are brave boys,” Dad said. “We will find out tonight.”

When we got home from the movie, the night sky was clear, and the stars were bright. The moon was not up yet, and there were no lights around to distract from the milky way.

“So, do you boys want my big flashlight?” Dad asked with a little chuckle. “It is going to be pretty dark up along that creek. Or are you a little concerned about that cougar your sister says she saw?”

That was just a little hint that he was not sure he believed my sister. But it was still possible and something to think about.

“I guess we could probably sleep here tonight,” I said. “And then we could go up and cook breakfast at the campsite in the morning.”

“I think I would feel a lot better about things if you slept here,” Mom said. “That cat could carry you off before you even knew it was there.”

That was all we needed to hear. If Mom thought we should sleep in the house, we would sleep in the house.

We were up at the crack of dawn and headed up the hill. We were both well versed in the out of doors. We had a cooking fire going in no time, and I mixed the pancake batter.

“I am not sure those are going to look much like pancakes,” Dana said as he watched me trying to turn over the pancake in the little cook set fry pan.

By the time we sit back to eat, the pancakes were in a jumbled heap on the plates. But it was cooked, and a little syrup made it all better. We ate quietly, both of us thinking that Mom would have made a better breakfast.

After watching a few deer and the digger squirrels, we packed up the camp. Dana just folded the pup tent into a square and threw it over his back. It was all downhill to the house. We started off, chuckling about looking for cougar tracks down at the creek. That made us walk a little faster.

Many Fish to Catch

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Stan pulled into our driveway on his way home from work. I was in the garage and greeted him as he stepped out of his pickup.

“Hi, Stan, what’s up this afternoon,” I said as I shook his hand.

“Dave, you know I have a little fish pond up at my place,” Stan said. “It’s not much, but it grows some pretty good fish. The bunch I have in there now are all about twelve inches long. I am planning to catch a couple of five-gallon bucketfuls Saturday. You are more than welcome if you want to bring your kids up to help catch some fish. It will be pretty hectic. I just throw a small bucket of pellets into the pond, and those fish go crazy. They will bite anything.”

“Sure, Stan, I am sure the kids will enjoy helping,” I said. “What the heck are you going to do with ten gallons of fish?”

“I am going to smoke them,” Stan said. “It takes that many to fill up my smokehouse. It takes as much wood to smoke a small batch as it does to smoke a full smokehouse. Then the problem becomes getting them eaten. I usually put some in the freezer, but my kids are big enough. They can make pretty short work of a bunch of fish.”

“What time do you want to do this?” I asked.

“I was thinking about ten on Saturday morning,” Stan said. “We are supposed to have some light rain later in the morning, but I am guessing we will fill a couple of buckets in less than fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, we will have the girls up there by ten,” I said. “Derek is still too young, but he will enjoy watching.”

When I looked outside on Saturday morning, it was apparent that the weatherman was about as accurate as always. A steady light rain was falling, and it wasn’t seven yet.

I went back to the bedroom to roust Sandy out of bed.

“If we are going to get this crew up to Stan’s by ten, we have to get moving,” I said.

“Have you started cooking breakfast?” Sandy asked.

“I started the coffee,” I said.

“The kids don’t drink coffee,” Sandy said. “I was talking about something for the kids.”

“I’ll make pancakes,” I said. “That is something that they all will eat.”

After getting the girls dressed, I started turning out the pancakes.

“I’m not sure I want to go fishing in the rain,” Brenda said as she seated herself at the table.

“This is going to be a pretty simple fishing trip,” I said. “We will drive up to Stan and Erika’s place, get out of the car and catch a bunch of fish out of Stan’s pond. It won’t take long, and it might be a wild time.”

Amy and Dee were slower to get to the table, but they were there before Sandy came along with Derek. I had taken the kids over the Ames Creek to fish a couple of times this summer. The fish were small and few and far between.

I have always told people that when you teach a kid to fish, you must catch fish. If you are not catching fish, go find something else to do. If the kid asks you what a bite feels like, you have been fishing too long.

“Today we are going to catch a lot of fish,” I said. “And it is not going to take very long. And Susie will be there.”

By the time breakfast was over, I think everyone was on board to go fishing. And Susie had babysat for us, which gave them confidence that they would know someone there.

The entire Walter family was waiting for us when we drove down their driveway and parked by the house. The kids were ready to catch some fish.

Stan was waiting at the pond with a small bucket of pelleted fish food. The rain had stopped, but the grass was still pretty wet. It should be a good day.

This pond was not large. It was rectangular, maybe ten feet across, and thirty feet long. There was a small stream that ran through the pond.

“I dug this out and dumped a load of river gravel in the bottom,” Stan said. “It is eight to ten feet deep, and the fish do really well in it. The stream is not year-round, so we fish it out before the stream drys up. Then in the fall, I order another batch of fish.”

“The banks are pretty steep,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” Stan said. “You wouldn’t want a pond like this with kids the ages of yours. But it works well for us, and we use it just as another farm crop, fish instead of chickens, I guess.”

“So what is the process here?” I asked.

“Ralph and Tina have dug a few worms this morning,” Stan said. “I plan to throw part of this bucket in the pond, and these fish will go wild. It won’t take fifteen minutes to fill those two five-gallon buckets. You and I will have a hard time unhooking the fish and baiting the hooks.”

We got the poles ready and baited the hooks with a small piece of worm. Sandy was holding Derek, talking with Erika, and waiting for the start. We threw the lines in the water, and Brenda had a fish before Stan threw in the pellets. I quickly put Brenda’s fish in the bucket and got her line back in the water.

Stan threw in the pellets, and fish boiled to the surface. The kids all seemed to pull a fish out at the same time. Stan was helping Tina and Brenda, and I took care of Amy and Dee. Ralph and Susie were old pros to the process and caught the lion’s share.

Amy’s pole had a big bend, and she struggled to pull the fish out of the water.

“Do you have any big fish in here?” I asked Stan.

“No chance for a big fish,” Stan said. “These are just put them in and take them out. Most of these fish are the same size. We might see a ten-inch fish once in a while, but most of them will be twelve inches.”

Amy pulled harder, and I helped with a hand on the rod. Out came two fish on the line. One on the hook and one lassoed around the gills with the line.

“That’s pretty good, Amy,” I said. “Catching two fish with one hook.”

It was probably less than fifteen minutes, and the buckets were full.

“That was some event, Stan,” I said.

“There is nothing better than watching kids have fun catching fish,” Stan said. “I am glad you could come and help with the harvest.”

Ralph headed to the house with one of the buckets, and we cleaned up around the pond before heading home to clean up the kids.

“Do you want a handful of these for dinner?” Stan asked.

“Sandy and the kids are much for eating fish,” I said. “I might take a couple, any more than that wound just be wasting them.”

“Pick out what you want,” Stan said.

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “For the fish and for the kids getting a chance to catch them. One of these days, I will have to talk to you about how you smoke them.”

“I don’t do anything special,” Stan said. “Just some salt and brown sugar in a dry brine.”

“I was talking with a guy who said that he would smoke a bunch of kokanees, cut off their heads and tails, and then can them in quart jars,” I said. “He said it worked great.”

“I haven’t tried canning these,” Stan said. “With this crew, we generally just eat them. If that isn’t going to happen, we might stick some in the freezer for a couple of weeks, but that’s all.”

“Well, thanks again,” I said as I loaded the kids into the car. “I will check with you sometime next week.”

Photo by Mateusz Feliksik from Pexels.

Something is Moving in There 

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

Hopefully, this was the last of the summer heat. The thermometer was already creeping past eighty as I returned to the clinic from lunch. I was thankful for the new air conditioner that we had just installed in the clinic. It was a relief to step into the cool air inside the clinic.

“You have Lila waiting in the exam room,” Sandy said. “She thinks that Archie has a odd abscess.”

Archie was a large orange neutered male cat who was a frequent visitor to the clinic. Lila had tried to keep him in the house but he insisted that he live outside. And he was protective of his turf. As a result, abscesses were common for Archie.

“What’s going on with Archie this afternoon?” I asked as I entered the exam room. “Sandy said you thought he had an odd abscess.”

“You know Archie,” Lila said. “If any cat even comes close to his yard, the fight is on. But this doesn’t look like his usual abscess. There is something moving in there.”

A lot of cat abscesses are on their hips or their tail head, where they get nailed as they are trying to retreat. Archie didn’t know anything about retreating. His abscess were always on his head, shoulders, or front legs. 

This abscess was on the right side of his abdomen. That was unusual enough, but to have something moving in there, meant this was probably not the typical cat abscess.

“Well, Archie, let’s get a look at this spot on your side,” I said as roughed the top of Archie’s head. He pressed his head up against my hand, wanting a little more attention.

I pressed Archie’s head over until he flopped onto his left side. Then I had a clear view of this odd abscess. 

The lump was almost perfectly round and a little larger than a quarter and it protruded out over a half of an inch. I moved the hair aside from the top of the wound. There was a round hole located on top of the protrusion. There had been some minor drainage from this hole and a small margin of hair loss around the hole. This hair loss only amount to a few millimeters. Unlike Archie’s usual abscesses, this lesion was not painful.

I scratched Archie’s behind his ear as leaned down to look closely at this wound. Sure enough, something moved in there. Lila had her head close so she could see what I was seeing.

“What on earth is going on?” Lila asked.

“I think that some little fly thought that Archie was a rabbit,” I said. “This a Cuterebra larva that is moving in there. There is a surprisingly large grub living and growing inside this lesion on Archie’s side.”

“That’s a big word, Doctor Larsen,” Lila said. “But how did it happen?

“We can call it a warble and be pretty accurate,” I said. “It looks a lot like the warble we used to see on cattle a lot before ivermectin was used. It is a different critter, but the life cycle is similar. This little fly lays its eggs around the burrow of a rabbit or other rodent. The eggs hatch and the little larva enters the host through a body opening or wound. They migrate through the body and in this case, they reach the tissue under the skin where they set up shop. The make a breathing hole and feed in the discharges of the body. They mature and finally drop out and form a cocoon when the grow into a fly. When they find a cat instead of a rabbit or a mouse, it is completely by accident.”

“What are we going have to do to get it out of him? Lila asked.

“I think that Archie is a good enough patient that I can squirt some local anesthetic into that breathing hole and just pull that big old grub right out of there,” I said.

“Oh, that would be good,” Lila said. “Bob and I have an appointment in Corvallis this late this afternoon and Archie would have to stay overnight if you had to sedate him. He would hate that.”

I drew up a half cc of lidocaine into a syringe, removed the needle and just squeezed it into the breathing hole. After waiting a few minutes, the entire lump was numb, probably the grub also.

I grabbed the warble with a pair of thumb forceps. Then with gentle traction, I pulled him out through his breathing hole. This was sort of like pulling a basketball through a knothole. This breathing hole was about the size of the lead in a pencil and the grub was the size of the pencil.

I pulled careful because the book always spoke of an immediate shock reaction was possible if the grub was ruptured in the process of extraction. That was something I had never witnessed and never talked with a colleague who had witnessed such an event. Still, I didn’t want to risk it now.

Lila gasped as I stretched the grub out through the hole and then the larger portion of his body started to balloon out of the enclosure.

“My gosh!” Lila exclaimed. “How big is this thing?”

Just then the whole thing popped out of the hole and sort of contracted its body. I laid it on a paper towel beside Archie on the exam table. It wiggled a bit and Lila recoiled a bit. It was nearly an inch long and like I said before, at its thickest part, about the size of a pencil around, and sort of narrowed on each end.

“I can’t believe it,” Lila said. “That bug has been living inside of Archie and he acted like nothing was wrong.”

“I will flush this wound out and we will put Archie on some antibiotics for awhile,” I said. “He will heal up better than he heals after an abscess.”

“How on earth are we going to keep Archie from getting another one of these?” Lila asked.

“Lila, we have talked about this before,” I said. “You can prevent this the same way you can prevent Archie’s abscesses. All you have to do is keep him indoors.”

“And I have told you before, Doctor Larsen, there is no way we can live with this cat if he can’t go outside,” Lila said. “I guess he is just going to have to take his chances.”

***

It was a couple of weeks later when Lila was back with Archie to recheck his lesion.

“It looks like Archie is as good as new,” I said after examining him.

“Bob and I discussed trying to keep Archie in the house,” Lila said. “Bob is adamant that Archie is hunter and trying to change is life style at this point would cruel. I guess I sort of agree with him. If that leads to a shorter life span, so be it. At least he will enjoy what time he has on this earth.”

“I can’t argue with you on that point, Lila,” I said. “And Archie will have a bigger problem with abscesses than he will have those warbles. I only see a handful of those cases each summer. My guess is he will have to live another couple of life spans before he would have another warble.”

***

Archie continued to live mostly outside until he was twelve or thirteen when he started to slow down a little. He was almost sixteen when he passed away in the mid 1980s. At that time, there were very male cats who lived to sixteen.

Photo by Recep Fatih Kaya on Pexels.