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blonde
hair. “I’m gonna call my advisor. I know he’ll want to see
this.”
    Manny smoothed
his mustache with one finger. “Look guys, I think we’re going to
hoof it back downtown.” He turned and started walking with
Pete.
    “ Take it easy,”
I called after them and turned to Lane. “They seemed a little
spooked. Do you think we should try to get in touch with the park
service or something?”
    “ No. Not yet.
This could be an important find. We don’t want the state coming in
and mucking things up with paperwork. If these beetles really were
crawling from the ground…I dunno, they could be a new species,
something not studied.” He must have seen the confusion on my face.
“You know about cicadas right?”
    “ Cicadas. Yeah,
they make that buzzing sound. Only around during certain
years.”
    “ Right. They
spend most of their lives underground, only coming out to mate and
die. A lot of insects go through early stages in the life cycle
underground—natural protection from predators.” Lane looked at the
beetle carcass, touching the tip of one foreleg. “I think this guy
‘grew up’ underground. Look at the forelegs.”
    I examined the
two segmented limbs closely, noting they were somewhat thicker,
maybe sturdier, than the other legs. “How do they know when to
climb out of the ground?”
    Lane bent down
and really scrutinized the beetle’s abdomen. “Probably just a
chemical trigger…something inside that says ‘it’s
time’.”
    “ Probably?”
“Yeah. Sometimes these things happen because of environmental
factors.”
    “ The
rain?”
    “ Not exactly.
More like ground temperature reaching a certain point—raising a
degree or two. Something like that. Something that would signal
‘everything’s ok, come on out’ to the little bundle of nerves in
his ganglion—his insect brain.” Lane thrust a thumb toward the
beetle’s head. “I guess enough rain, if it’s warm enough—could help
boost the ground temperature. I don’t really know.”

    We always had
our fair share of community wildlife in Monument. Deer or elk would
wander through town, especially in fall—during mating season, the
“rut” as we called it. That summer, more large mammals wandered out
of the surrounding woods, many more than I had experienced since
living there.
    The sheriff, a
thick, balding fellow named Mort Kress, and one of his deputies,
Benny Wilson, brought this large buck into town one day. It was
dead—mauled. Something had torn the poor thing open, gutted it. I
was sitting outside the café when they pulled up in the sheriff’s
truck, and I could see the antlers sticking out of the bed.
Curiosity drew me across the street. “What happened?” I
asked.
    “ Nothing but
road-kill, I guess. Benny and me figured we better load it up, get
it out of there. Found it out on Deer Creek Road. Surprised nobody
reported this one.” He slammed the door of his truck
shut.
    “ What do you
mean?” I glanced into the bed, saw the horrible strips where flesh
was torn from the sides of the deer.
    “ Look at it.
Must’ve messed somebody’s car up pretty good, by the looks of
that.” The Sheriff turned and followed Benny inside the café. I
stood for a moment, taking in the image of the mauled animal, and
imagining the monstrous car that could do that kind of
damage.

    The rain started
again, heavy floods from the iron sky. I sat in my booth at Pine
Peak, munching on some burnt bacon and digesting a few short
stories from my new textbooks for the fall. Randy perched on his
usual stool with no sign of Pete or Manny.
    “ I don’t much
mind the rain today,” Randy muttered to Darla. “Too many of those
damn bugs.”
    I closed my
book, and turned my head slightly toward the counter, enticed by
the word “bugs”.
    “ You’ve just
been workin’ too hard,” Darla said, smiling. “Trying to make up for
lost time with the weather.”
    Randy tugged
hard on his beard and said, “No. No, there’s something out