Things I Wouldn't Want to Meet in the Forest

I don't spend a lot of time in the forest, but there is a Creighton basketball game on Friday night and if I have a few drinks at the Qwest Center I might end up on the woodland trails on the Iowa side of the pedestrian bridge. If I don't come back, one of these things probably got me!

Hillbillies


I know that "sons of the soil" is probably a more P.C. term to use here, but I'm not going to put on pretenses about the toothless multitudes lurking out in the woods. I know they're just simple country folks trying to live their simple country life, but I can't help but be a bit wary and suspect that that simple country life involves gutting me with a rusty Bowie knife. The hillbilly lifestyle manifests a certain menace to non-hill folk like you and me Look at the kid in the above picture. I guarantee he's not playing the intro to Freelance Whales' "Generator^First Floor" on that banjo.

On the other hand, they might offer me some of their modest boondock hooch.
I can get behind an idea like that. And a beard like that.


Aliens


To me it makes perfect sense that aliens have never contacted humans. If I was a vastly technologically superior species that had unlocked the science behind traveling the universe, I wouldn't waste time with a bunch of doofuses who still drove around in cars. It's kinda the same reason that people don't reach out to the fishes and shell-creatures of the ocean; we don't really have that much to learn from them.

If this analogy holds true, though, it unlocks another, more terrifying notion of aliens. Question: when is the one time humans reach out to the fishes and shell-creatures? Answer: when we want to capture and eat them! If I cross the path of those little hairless rubberfaced goons while I'm out for a romp in the woods, they are more likely than not intergalactic versions of these guys.


I don't wanna get cracked and dipped in alien butter.

Rick Moranis



Yes, on one hand it would pretty awesome for me to be able to say that I met Rick Moranis, star of such classics as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2. On the other hand, if Rick Moranis is in the woods in the middle of the night, there is absolutely no way he is up to any good.

Get the hell out of there. Don't look back.

Grizzly bear


No, no, no, I don't mean these melodic alt-rockers. If I ran into them in the forest, the worst thing that could happen is an acoustic set from Horn of Plenty or Chris Taylor trying to show me his tattoos.

I meant this kind of grizzly bear.


If I chanced upon one of these godless killing machines I would soon fall victim to its ferocious nature, powerful jaws and savage claws. I really don't think I could be that upset about it, though. Bears are awesome so getting gruesomely mauled by one makes me kind of awesome by association. If I do meet up with a Ursus arctos horribilis, my only hope is that I can give it a high five before it crashes its massive paws and razor sharp claws through my face.

An evil wizard


An "evil" wizard seems pretty redundant here, because if a wizard is lurking around in the forest in the dark of a winter night, he's guaranteed to be evil as the day is long. Let me tell you, there is nothing worse than an evil wizard. I know. As someone who might have almost ran into the feared and infamous "glider" I can assure you that any iniquitous practitioners of magic are not to be taken lightly. Evil wizards loath the rest of mankind and most of them have gone crazy from the neverending carousel that is immortality. The only thing the have left to break up the blurring monotony of endless life is blasting mortals like you and me into a fiery and utter oblivion, after they torture us.

Alternatively, what you mistook as a wizard was just a homeless guy.
And when you're hammered you consider them to be pretty harmless.


Low life jamboree to ensue.