Letters from Smitty: The Baby Hawk
Salutations!
Thank Heavens! My apparently Slovenian captors have finally acquiesced to my repeated requests to write to you. They weren’t exactly generous with the office supplies unfortunately so I am scrawling my message to you on the back of a cardboard box with some skeletal component of a deceased rat. You may be inquiring to yourself, “What kind of pickle does Alan find himself in now?” I do acknowledge the fact that I seem to always write to you with tales of my own precarious situations. In my defense though, you surely cannot hold me accountable for last week’s escapades! I understand now that when one aims to overthrow the President of one’s local Bocce Ball club, then one is practically begging for trouble. Although I found his administrative decisions to lean fascist (moving league nights to Wednesdays, etc), I recognize now that my para-military style coup was not the appropriate response. An easier path would have been to poison him or at the very least tell him that I have Zumba on Wednesday nights and thus a conflict. But that is old news. After all it is not possible to move forward while you are looking backwards. Unless of course, you’re an ostrich. I suspect that you were not, however, some questions about this remain unanswered.
My dilemma is as follows: while on the third leg of my hyper-ultra-marathon from my home in Sheridan, WY to Rock Springs, WY; I ran out of water somewhere near the Pathfinder National Wildlife Refuge. Having been in situations not unlike these before, I knew that I either had to find a succulent plant from which I could extract enough water to fill up my canteen or find a Valero gas station that sold Glacier Freeze Gatorade. I opted for the former and in my search in the wild for water, I befriended an old red-tailed hawk. Perhaps it was the dehydration talking but, god damn it if this wasn’t the funniest SOB I’ve ever met. He had story after story, mostly from his time as a day laborer on a landscaping crew. If you ever meet this majestic bird, ask him to tell you the story of when his foreman fell asleep in a french drain. It is truly a bawdy yarn.
This hawk must have really worked his charms on me because later that night, as we were running low on cocaine, he formulated a half-baked plan to knock off a Slovenian fraternal hall over in Rock Springs. He knew a bartender who worked there and apparently they closed out most nights with a few hundred in cash.
That brings us to the present. As you can imagine, the “heist” didn’t go as smoothly as planned. I’m fairly certain that they killed the hawk. I’ve been in what appears to be some type of custodian’s closet for at least three days.
It’s hard to decipher because of the language barrier, but I believe they’re debating on what to do with me. If you could either notify the local police or activate my self-destruct button remotely, it would be appreciated.
Yours,
Alan “Smitty” Gibbons
KONKDADDY 