Llamas, Anyone?
by Robert Langley

Whut thuh hayul is theyut?

By Bob Arthur

Sometime back in the early to mid 1980's, a group of HCC paddlers decided to paddle down the San Bernard River, out into the Gulf of Mexico and then camp on the "island" between the mouth of the river and Freeport. The island exists because of the Intercoastal Waterway and as far as I know, the mouth of the San Bernard has completely silted up making access to the Gulf impossible now. HCC paddlers from memory included Larry Wild, Jerry Richardson, Jim Diehl and Anne Stevenson. There were others but they slip my mind.

We camped and fished and paddled in the surf and had a general all-around good time. My partner and I paddled an 18' 6" touring canoe, not a perfect surfing boat, but we had a good time and I stll have the canoe, a Beaver Big Brother (and that’s another story).

Late in the day, camp was all set up, firewood gathered and we settled into the usual "around the camp-fire" bull session for an hour or so. Not a light could be seen in any direction but there must have been some moonlight and you know there were about a million or so stars shining. Someone noticed this apparition approaching down the beach from the West.... lumbering down the beach toward our camp. What the hell is that? Getting larger and larger as it approached, just the outline of something big. The thing approached to within 25 or 30 feet of our camp when shining flashlight beams helped us identify it as a large black bull.

Since I had worked on ranches, I thought I'd chunk something at it and holler "hooey" and chase it off.

Well, I chunked and hollered and the dang thing made a charge.....sort of a false charge, but he didn't tell me that at the time. I think I jumped 15 feet back toward the camp....we measured my footprints the next morning........it may well have been 20 feet. The bull didn't come any further, but hung around for a couple of hours sort of in the edge of the light from the very large fire we built to scare him off. Everyone knows that animals won't approach a fire, don't they? I think I leaned that from a Tarzan movie.

As we had paddled down the river earlier in the day, we had noticed this black bull on the island and paid it no mind. But he paid attention to us and just came for an evening visit. And we really did have a campfire bull session.