A short time later, and to my moderate surprise, I meet two old men going the other way. One is wearing an incongruous yellow miner's hat, complete with little light, and both wear blue overalls and heavy tool belts stuffed with all manner of gizmos. The man without the helmet clutches a strange, long-handled tool - it looks like the blasphemous prodigy of a shovel and a rake. I think of sporks. Perhaps it is a shrake. Rovel just sounds wrong somehow.

It turns out they are the trail maintenance crew, or so they say. Raking leaves and chopping wayward logs. I notice the shrake man also carries a long saw under his left arm.

They admit to some surprise at seeing me, as the trail isn't on the map. I wonder to myself why they bother maintaining an unlisted trail. I make a joke about the deer being, myself excluded, the only beneficiaries of their efforts; and then tell them about the torn-apart deer on the trail.

Their eyes light up for a minute, and then their expressions go carefully neutral.

"A deer on the trail, you say? I suppose we'd better be cleaning it up... How far did you say it was?"

I tell them probably about a five-minute walk. The first man tips his helmet at me and the other shoulders his shrake. They hike away quickly. Almost... eagerly.

I stand still for a minute, listening to the furtive rustlings around me and sipping from my plastic bottle of warm water. It only takes a moment or two for me to come to a decision. I turn and follow after the strange pair, taking care to be stealthy - which isn't hard given the density of the undergrowth and the relative leaflessness of this section of trail. Very well maintained, you might say.

I'm not sure what I expect to discover. I do know it's nothing like the sight that awaits me around the bend.

The maintenance guys are crouched in the middle of the trail, using their surprisingly large teeth to good effect. Yellow Helmet is gnawing voraciously on the deer leg, and Shrake is munching contentedly on the hide, brushing away flies with one hand and still grasping his strange tool in the other. The hide hangs down like a strange, rhythmically flapping beard as he chews. There is no sign of the dusty pile of innards. Just a wet patch where they once lay.

I make a startled noise, feeling like the dumb guy in a bad horror movie as I do it.

The pair freeze. The helmet clicks on. Hands grasp for tool belts. Out come some very impressive filleting tools, ornately carved and wickedly barbed.

I do the sane thing. I run, hurtling down the trail like a jackrabbit. In my panic, I almost crash headlong into another pair of maintenance guys, similarly but not identically attired. Their faces register extreme startlement as I frantically slide in the dirt and fight for balance.

Then, before they can speak, and mother's advice be damned, I leave the trail and hurtle down the leafy, brambly hillside. Maybe, I think as I slip and scramble, those two are real maintenance guys. If they are, they'd better have some pretty hefty tools in their bags.
J3a(5)