Extreme Sport Laudie-Dog and Scary Zombies at Holy Souls Hermitage

Laudie-dog is the most gentle, friendly, silly, clutzy, enthusiastic, sleep-all-day, full of energy, block-headed, smart as a tack dog you would ever want to have around.

Also, she just doesn’t bark, ever, which is a blessing. Well, she almost never barks. She only barks at zombies.

The other night, say about midnight, just when I’m ready to go to bed, she perks up. She hears something, something going bump in the night, something scary.

I’ve never, ever seen her do this. She had to go outside N O W ! ! ! She was in full attack mode. Growling, barking, howling, snorting, grunting, more growling, chasing, confrontational challenging of some monster, running back to the hermitage to circle it and see if I was still alive, threatening whatever it was the whole time, and then back in attack mode, keeping at bay, away from the hermitage, whatever it was.

And whatever it was circled the hermitage perhaps twice over a space of about 45 minutes, at a distance of about a hundred yards or so, with Laudie keeping up the assault of barking and growling and threatening the whole time, checking on me to see if I was alive about every five minutes or so, absolutely frantic for my welfare.

What a great Laudie-dog!

I’m guessing it was not a bear or even my favorite wolf, or one of the many coyotes, as that is not their behavior at all. Once they have domestic dogs after them, they just get annoyed and leave. They know better than to stick around what with so many hunters looking to kill them. This was not a hunter, as there were no accompanying dogs.

This was, therefore, a zombie, sometimes in the National Forest, which is fine and dandy, but sometimes on private property, which is a no-no in these parts.  Circling the hermitage in this way, especially at night, would be extremely difficult. Some places are extremely steep. There are thorned vines to trip you up. There are holes and fallen logs. There are broken pine branches gouging your eyes out. Gaghh! To do this twice, blindly, with no light, is somewhat insane. Whatever. Laudie did her job.

However, whoever it was came back today, in broad daylight. I was down the mountain a bit, but the neighbor described Laudie’s behavior, and it matched the other night. Uh-oh. Whoever it was, went away by way of the forest. Not a good sign, that.

But then the neighbor said that Laudie came chasing down the forest logging path so incredibly fast that she couldn’t stop, even though she knew she was in mortal danger because of her speed. She put on the brakes up the next ridge. Imagine a dog in full breakneck sprint down a steep hill with zero thought of stopping until it’s really way too late. Evel Knievel Laudie. She needs a parachute deployment system to slow down.

I didn’t want to take such a report too seriously, but then, in hiking it up the mountain, I saw where she tore up the path trying to slow down, perhaps one hundred and eighty feet of putting on the brakes until getting smacked down by the forest on the next ridge. The whole path was slashed with the Laudie-claw braking system.

Was she running away from a zombie? I don’t know, but Laudie can move faster than anything in Western North Carolina. That’s for sure.

Freezing rain just started, and will go on all night. So, no worries about zombies being out in such weather.

It makes me wonder whether I should consider a cc permit. Naw. I wouldn’t have the money for that anyway! Way, way, way too expensive. The Ka-Bar and the crowbar, and Laudie, are more than enough.

Seriously: I’ve heard what sounded like hammering this morning and this evening over in the forest. I wonder if someone is building a little campsite that’s somewhat permanent. We might be seeing much more of this in times to come, in which case, in these parts, I might be the chaplain to the squatters. We’ll all have to help each other.