Thread by @JuliusGoat

I like to tell my kids I’m working on a new book, then tell them stories premised on old pop culture.

“Let me tell you a story about this man named … Jed. He was a poor mountaineer. Some days he’d go out hunting all day and barely come back with enough to keep his family fed.”

“So one day he’s shooting at some food, when … the bullet ricochets off a rock and hits him right in the eye. Poor Jed’s half blind.”

“Jed’s worried, too, because he was just about to head back, and a mighty blizzard is coming.”

“Now the animal he was shooting at was a raccoon. And when Jed finally stops the bleeding and gets himself calmed down, he notices the raccoon still there, looking at him. Just really staring at him.”

“Despite his pain, Jed nearly screams with surprise when the raccoon speaks.”

“My name is Lester,” the raccoon says. “The Royal Raccoon. And you, sirrah, have made attempt on the very life's blood of my royal personage. I shall have satisfaction from you, villain.”

Jed—a mountain man after all—didn’t understand highfalutin' talk. He said this: “Huh?”

Lester replied. “Your eye, varlot. I shall take your other eye.”

Well now, that didn’t seem too good to ol’ Jed.

He was just about to give himself over to despondency when he recollected that he was holding his trusty hunting piece, and Lester, royal or not, wasn’t furnished with aught but that silky-talkin’ tongue of his.

Jed raised his rifle.

Click. Misfire.

Worse: last bullet.

And so the chase was on. Jed, running through the woods fast as his legs could take him. Lester raccoon, natural-born to the woods, making his way just as fast.

Soon that blizzard took Jed on all sides, and the snow, it started to hold.

Jed knew he had only one hope, and that was to get to a nearby cache he'd set up back in spring, that had some jerky, some thread and needed ... and a few spare cartridges.

He *hoped* the cartridges were there. He couldn't entirely recollect.

Meanwhile, as ol' Jed runned, the sun was dimming down, and the snow rising, and he could hear Lester calling his subjects, could hear rustlin all around.

Could hear ol' Lester calling "I shall have that last eye of yours, sirrah!"

"Anyway," I tell my kids. "I think I'll call it THE LAST JED EYE."

My kids have learned to stop listening to me tell stories.

Someday I'll tell you the story I set in Yosemite National Park, in which a yogi named Bear and a park ranger named Smith trace a mysterious pattern of buried gold strings that all seem to be leading to a mysterious geyser Smith's never seen before.

I call it RANGER STRINGS