Run and Hide

 

    It appeared as a husk, a thick covering from some type of fruit.  I obviously was not at all familiar with it.  The thing that caught my attention was its underside appeared to be moving, as if alive. 

    Certainly, no fruit I ever heard of.  If it were an animal hide, what possibly could it have been?  I wanted to pick it up for a closer look, but I dared not touch it.  Whatever it was moving around just under the skin I didn’t want moving around on me.  I wanted to snap a picture, a close-up, if possible, but my phone was out of juice.

          If I had something to put it in, I’d carry it back with me.  It is possible someone else might recognize it right off and tell me what it was I had discovered.  At least I should mark this location.  If I can’t take it with me, at least I should be able to find this spot again.  I bent down once more to have a final look and that’s when I noticed the smell.  Now, I really wasn’t sure if it was part of an animal or rotting fruit.  Yikes!  I’d have that smell to remember for some time.

          Why, I thought, hadn’t I smelled it the first time I leaned over to look at it?  Was it decomposing right before my eyes?  Then again, if it were rotting, why weren’t there flies or ants crawling about?  Nature cleans up her own messes.  What was different about this?  If this were a hide, then what happened to the animal it's from?  Something larger must have torn the thing apart, and if that’s the case, maybe I shouldn’t be hanging around here at all.

    What was that?...