[shilala]

I gots another one...

I was fishing in the rip rap below the Kinzua Dam at Kinzua Resevoir.
Great big rocks. Big gaps, too. Directly behind where I fished was the fish hatchery where they raised Atlantic Landlocked Salmon and Rainbows for stripping.

There's a trail right along the fence running across my back, and I noticed a groundhog walking down the trail. Then he walked back up the trail.
He did this a number of times, getting closer each time. I just kept glancing back at him and he'd be crawling up and down rocks, headed to the left, then back to the right.
This went on for well over an hour, and I have to admit, it was getting on my nerves.

Mostly I was mad because I was fishing an eddy on a giant rock and schools of a dozen or more of those landlocked salmon were cruising by. I'd never caught one.
So I had to really concentrate to get a jig tipped with a shiner right in front of their noses. That's the only hope a person had of catching one, because the ones below the hatchery were cast-off breeders who were blind as a bat because of living their whole lives in those concrete runs. All scarred over the eyes and what-not.

I'm fishing, and this goofy groundhog is now 10 feet behind me, making the same 50 yard passes upstream and downstream with me in the center of his hike.
I knew he was up to something, I just had no idea what.

So I gave up fishing, stuck my pole under my arm, popped a cold one, and kept my eye on him. Eventually he climbed up my rock, 5 feet from me.
When he did, I gave him a good poke with my fishing pole.
This is where things got interesting.
I thought he was a groundhog. Turns out he was a Tasmanian Devil just released from the Asylum in downtown Warren.
Sumb1tch went critical mass on me the second that pole touched him.
He's running circles between my legs, my beer flies up in the air, I'm dancing, jump to the next rock, kick over my tackle box and empty all 5 metric tons of tiny pieces of gear, the beer hits me in the center of the back and soaks me, and this crazy **** is gnashing and wailing at me.

Now, here's a thing. When groundhogs are mad, their teeth don't just click together. They sound like a spring-loaded bone trap. CLACK!!! CLACK!!! CLACK!!!

Faced with this happening which has rapidly become a full-blown incident, the only thing I could think is "run".
As I mentioned, giant rocks. So I jump a few rocks as fast as me and my hip waders can, and I look back and face him off.
He looks at me, standing in the middle of absolute carnage, all my gear up-ended, spilled, abandoned, broken, you name it.
He raises up his chest, sniffs at me twice, and starts working his way back the other direction.

I'm convinced to this day that he tells this story at the groundhog bar and has his friends laughing till their guts hurt.