Tim Samoff // Weblog (old)

June 01, 2004

The Legend of Hazelnut & Greystone...

This past weekend, Julianna and I went camping at Leavenworth State Fishing Lake. As always, it was beautiful. As usual, there is a story.

(Note: click images to see bigger versions.)

Upon arriving at the lake, we made our trip around the banks, attempting to find a good camp site. I really liked where my brother and I went last time, so we drove to the spot to check it out. Last time, my brother and I were the only ones there. It was so nice. This time… Well, it was Memorial Day weekend, so I wasn’t too surprised when I saw people there, but I was a little disappointed. In order to get as far away from other campers as we could, we continued to drive around the site.

Almost out to thr main road again, we turned into the last camping area. Immediately, we saw what looked to be a dead animal of some sort on the road. But, then it moved! It wasn’t a dead animal, but two little kittens huddled together and shaking violently.

Julianna was the first out of the car. I wasn’t quite sure about the situation, but after Julianna had already begun checking the kittens out, I felt that I had better help.

They couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks old. And someone had dropped them here to fend for themselves; abandoned two helpless kittens without food or shelter.

Julianna was quick to pick the two kittens up. Upon a cursory them, they seemed safe enough. And they were cute!

After finding the kittens, we drove back to the spot where I had originally gone and found an area that was as far away from the other campers as wek could get. When we set up camp, the kittens hid under our car most of the time. They were very scared and didn’t no what to think of these two strangers.

We named them Hazelnut and Greystone.

We were fairly set on the fact that we would bring them home and raise them too. Even though I am allergic to cats, I was hoping that I could get used to them because they were still babies — you know, grow up with them and not be affected by my life-long plight.

Soon after setting up camp, the kittens had come out to play. They were still shaken, though. Every time a car would drive by, they would scamper through the grass until they were under the car again.

They wouldn’t eat anything that we had or drink any water. We were concerned, but Hazelnut and Greystone didn’t seem to be showing any signs of malnutrition. After a few hours, though, we decided that Julianna would drive into town (only about 20 minutes away) and buy some cat food.

During Julianna’s absense, I constructed a little “fort” for the kittens out of a cardboard box that we had. It was a shabby little lean-to with some newspapers for a floor, but the kittens loved it. It was close to the campsite and kind of felt like being under the car — soon after discovering it, they were soundly asleep.

Our first night didn’t consist of much sleep. The camp filled up with many loud weekenders who were out to take advantage of their time off. And we were resigned to letting the kittens sleep in the tent with us. Between the late-night partying and the rested and playful kittens, Julianna and I were pretty annoyed and awake.

Halfway through the night, I woke up from a few minutes of sleep completely congested. So much for my hypothosis on little kitty allergens. It was 4am and the parties were still raging and we just had to get the kittens outside. We were sad that they would have to fend for themselves for the rest of the night, but we had to get some sleep.

Not long after they were outside, the kittens quickly found a place to sleep: once they learned how to climb up the side of the tent, the found their way to the top, under the tent cover. It was pretty funny. They would climb up to the top and then, after falling asleep, one of them would undoubtedly lose his balance and fall to the ground. Then, a little more scurrying and climbing and he would be back to the top and asleep again.

Meanwhile, Julianna and I were able to get a couple of hours of solid sleep in.

The next morning, we went about our camping routine — basically taking it easy and playing with Hazelnut and Greystone. During this time, though, we knew that we couldn’t keep them. My allergies had flared up pretty bad. We still havn’t found a house. We couldn’t think of any friends who would want a surprise visit by two little kittens.

We had to find them a home.

We drove back into town to find an animal shelter…or something. What could we do in a small hick town that was too far from the city to drive back to? We quickly found some townfolk who we could ask. They suggested talking to a feed store that was down the street. On the way, we found a Vetrinary Clinic, but it was closed for the holiday. There was an emergency phone number on the door, so we jotted it down, but we still wanted to try the feed store.

The feed store proved no help at all. They said that they was a shelter in a town that was about thirty minutes away, but they weren’t sure it would be opened. Then, they suggested that we put a notice on their bulletin board…even after I had said twice that we didn’t live around there. It was pretty aggrivating.

We decided that we should find a pay phone and call the emergency phone number and see what we could find out. The woman on the other end of the emergency phone number was very nice, but could offer us little help — she was part of a county call center and didn’t really know the area that we were in. She did suggest that we call animal control or the Sheriff’s Department and see what they would want us to do.

I ended up calling the Sheriff’s Department (which, incidentally, was mostly closed for the holiday as well — you gotta love small towns!). I did get through to a very nice lady, though, who, after talking with me a while and taking down my contact information, said the Sheriff would be out shortly to pick up the kittens.

As we waited in the car for the Sheriff Hazelnut and Greystone began to freak out. I think that they knew our time was coming to an end. And I’m sure that they figuerd that we were going to abandon them too. It was very sad to think that we weren’t going to be able to help the little kittens anymore.

finally, the Sheriff arrived. He was an old, fat “good-ol’-boy” and upon our meeting he seemed very warm.

When I showed him the kittens, he smiled and said, “By golly, I may just keep ‘em myself.” And after putting Hazelnut and Greystone in the back of his car, “I’ll just let ‘em play around back there for a while.

Immediately, I knew that the Sheriff was taken by the kittens and ould probably provide a very good home. Julianna and I, though sad to see them go, were glad that we found a good home for the little guys.

Once back at the camp, we proceeded to nap and catch up on a little sleep. We rested, we read, we went for a walk. It was very nice.

That evening, the clouds began to come in. At first, I didn’t think anything of it — we had heard reports of rain, but I really didn’t think it would happen. The day was too nice and it just didn’t feel like rain.

I was wrong. Right before dinner, we had our first shower. It didn’t last long, but it was enough to make us a little wet. I also covered our tent with a tarp and got most of the stuff that we didn’t want to get wet either into the tent or the car.

But, it stopped raining pretty quickly and I was sure that if it did rain again it would only be a small shower.

Boy, was I wrong again. It was about 4am again when the rain began to pour. Up until then, it had been very windy — at times I thought our tent was going to blow away wit us in it. But the rain beat the wind by ten-fold. It came down in blankets, drenching everything within a few minutes.

Julianna and I felt pretty safe in our tent, though, and huddled together. We even managed to get a little more sleep… Until the water began to soak up into the tent from underneath. Somehow, the water started to come into over the tar that was under our tent. Soon, we were scurrying around, trying to gather everything we could in order to get to our car.

We got to the car with most of our stuff — we had left the sleeping bags in the tent. I was soaked from trying to batten down the remaining hatches and a little cold.

Needless to say, our second night didn’t provide much more sleep than the first. We tried to get as comfortable as we could in our little car and slept on and off until daybreak.

That morning, we quickly got everything together and drove home. It was sooner that I had wanted, but under the circumstances, the wet campground wouldn’t have provided us with much fun that day. And after all we had been through, we really did want to shower and go back to sleep in a bed.

Kittens. Parties. Wind. Rain. I’d say that it was a pretty good camping trip overall. Really. After all is said and done, Julianna and I had a lot of fun.

And the Legend of Hazalnut and Greystone lives on.

Posted at 08:07 am

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