Prairie Dogs, Pronghorns & Penis Sheaths
by Biff Spork
Chapter 9
Prairie Dog Salute
Prairie dogs (genus Cynomys) are herbivorous burrowing rodents native to the grasslands of North America. On average, these stout-bodied rodents will grow to be between 12 and 16 in long, including the short tail, and weigh between 1 and 3 lb. Highly social, prairie dogs live in large colonies or "towns" and collections of prairie dog families can span hundreds of acres. The prairie dog family groups are the most basic units of its society. The prairie dog is well adapted to predators. Using its dichromatic color vision, it can detect predators from a great distance; it then alerts other prairie dogs of the danger with a special, high-pitched call. Prairie dog calls contain specific information as to what the predator is, how big it is and how fast it is approaching.
I woke up when Marcus came back into the tent after a morning pee. We nuzzled and cuddled and drowsed before crawling out of the tent into the morning sun. Marcus rekindled our fire while I prepared a pot of oatmeal. Once the porridge was on the fire, we dived into the river and thrashed around until we were fully awake.
After breakfast we spent the morning setting up the campsite, making a proper fireplace with stones, fetching a supply of firewood, bringing some log seats and deciding where we were going to pee and poop.
Marcus and I were both very regular. Every morning shortly after we finished breakfast, both of us needed the toilet. Once we had picked our toilet area, well away from the campsite, we both dug shallow holes with a small spade, and squatted, pretty close together. I was a little shy about this. I'd never pooped with anyone before. Marcus and I squatted, facing each other. I saw a few squirts of pee come out of his penis. Then he got a concentrated look on his face.
" Wow!" I said. "That is neat. I never saw anyone pooping before."
After we had collected a good supply of firewood, I put a pot of soup on the fire. Anna and I had prepared packets of dry soup mix, and all I had to do was add water. While it cooked, we put the finishing touches on our camp, then hung our packs on the branches of a nearby tree.
I had never spent much time naked, and never outside my bedroom or bathroom, and the longer I was nude outdoors, the more I liked it. It felt right, like that was the way we were supposed to be. While doing campsite chores we both wore belts that carried our hunting knives. Marcus wore his around his waist. I preferred mine over one shoulder and under my arm, as if it were a bandoleer. It made me feel like we were buccaneers on an island in the Caribbean.
Boners still came and went but were not so insistent, as if my penis was getting accustomed to being a part of my body rather than a prisoner in my pants. I saw that those impossible-to-ignore boners I used to have arose when I started to think about having a squirt. Once I began to try not to think about having an orgasm, I didn't have quite so many boners, but the only way not to think about rubbing one out, was to think about something else.
" I've been thinking about boners," I said.
" Hey," said Marcus with a smile, "there's a fresh new idea."
" No, seriously," I said. By this time we were leering at each other, and both of us had rising boners. "What I've been thinking is that it's easier to go without jerking off, if you don't think about it."
" Okay," said Marcus. "But I don't decide to think about a boner; it just bones up all by itself."
" Yeah, but once it bones up you think about it, don't you? You pay attention to it."
" Well, yeah," he said. "I mean, there it is and it feels good, and it's sending out signals it could feel even better. It's like it's saying, 'Yoohoo, I'm all fat and hard now and ready for fun. Why not just give me a squeeze and a bit of a rub and have a really super nice feeling, now. NOW!'"
I handed him a bowl of soup and a spoon. He sat down on the log seat we had fixed near the fireplace. I dug a circle of pita bread out the pack for him, prepared the same for myself, and sat down beside him.
Both our boners had gone down. "See," I said between mouthfuls. "As soon as we started to think about soup, our boners went down."
" So?"
" Well," I said, "that's the trick, I think. If I always think about my boner when it bones up, then I'm always a little frustrated because it makes me want to jerk off. It's like my boner is my boss. The trick is to think about something else, not to let my boner decide what I think about."
" Yeah," said Marcus. "You're right. But I think I kinda do that anyway. I just never figured it out like that. The problem is that it's hard to think about anything else when you get a boner."
" I think it's easier if you watch what you're doing. If you decide to think about something else, or do something else, then try to be consciously aware of what you're doing, like, 'Now I'm eating soup,' and think about how it tastes and feels in your mouth."
Marcus laughed, "Or, 'Now I'm not thinking about my boner.'"
" Isn't it weird that we can't control what goes on in our minds?" I said. "Sometimes I'm sad, and sometimes I'm happy, and those feelings are inside my mind. I call it my mind but I don't seem to be in control of it. I can't decide to be happy and then be happy. It's the same as trying not to think about a boner when one comes. I mean, if it's really my mind then I should be able to make it think whatever I want it to think."
" Something I find interesting too," said Marcus, "is that you can't turn all that thinking on and off. Like sometimes it would be nice to just stop thinking for a while. I've tried that and I could never do it."
" You know," I said. "I think that's what Zen or yoga is about — I mean, that meditation stuff is to get control of your mind. I'd like to find out more about that kind of thing, how to do it."
" Yeah," said Marcus. "Like, 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?' Do you understand that?"
" No, but I wish I did. I think that kind of riddle is supposed to break your mind, so it stops thinking for a while."
" I'll ask Jason to get us a book," said Marcus. "Maybe we can try some yoga or Zen while we're out here where it's so peaceful."
Anna's soup was great — many dried vegetables mixed with lentils, fast-cooking grains like barley, and her special mix of spices. While we ate I decided to mention something else I had been thinking about. "I really like sleeping with you," I said. "Last night was the third night we've slept together, and I love it. It's like a conversation without words that goes on all night. I don't want ever to go back to sleeping by myself again."
Marcus nodded. "Mmmhm, that's why I asked Jason to go pick you up the other morning. It was too hard to go all night without seeing you, without feeling you. I love feeling you. You're so warm and smooth. I could just go to bed with you right now and stay there for about a year."
" Me, too. I get so happy when I hold you that all night, whenever I wake up even a little, it's like I'm just swimming in happiness."
Marcus nodded again, "Yep. I don't ever want to sleep alone again. Maybe when we finish this self-isolation thing, we can talk to your parents about us being together."
" I don't know how they'd take it, I mean us sleeping together," I said. "And I wouldn't want to explain the whole sex thing to them. Because we want to sleep in the same bed, everyone will assume it's because we want to have sex. I mean, what we do is like sex, but it's not. And it's nobody's business what we do together."
" Maybe we don't have to tell them," Marcus said. "They'll just realize after a while that we love each other, and that's a good thing, and the sex or no sex thing is not so important. I mean, it's not like either of us is gonna get pregnant."
I took our empty bowls and spoons to the river to wash. When I returned to the campfire Marcus said, "Maybe we can get Anna and Jason and your mom and dad together, and get them to agree to let us move back and forth between houses, so sometimes we're at my place, and sometimes we're at your place. That way we'll be together all the time and nobody will feel left out."
We decided to spend the afternoon exploring and looking for buffalo. An hour later we were seated on top of a low hill. Marcus scanned the horizon through a pair of binoculars. I saw some movement on a bare patch of land at the base of the hill. I peered more closely and saw a small animal stand up on its hind legs and look toward us. It emitted a high-pitched bark, and other similar animals began popping up out of nearby holes in the ground.
" There's something down there," I said. "Some gophers or something."
Marcus turned the binoculars where I pointed and said, "Prairie dogs. That's a whole town down there. When they saw us up here, they all went into hiding, but now they've decided that we're okay and have come out."
We watched the prairie dogs moving around, and I told Marcus about Jane Goodall and other scientists like her who observed animals for a long time, until they got to know the animals well and understood them. "We could study these prairie dogs and find out how they're living. It'd be great to understand what they're doing down there. They seem to be really busy."
We passed the binoculars back and forth watching the prairie dogs closest to us at the base of the hill. The first one I'd seen seemed to be the boss. Other big prairie dogs came and chatted with him from time to time like they were talking about what to do. Then we watched the mothers come out of the burrows, with little prairie dogs tumbling after them and playing around.
Suddenly the boss prairie dog gave a sharp bark and, in a flash, not a prairie dog was to be seen. A hawk swooped low over their town, then flew away. The boss prairie dog poked his head out of his burrow and watched the hawk shrink in the distance. He sounded another signal. Other town inhabitants reappeared from underground and resumed their activities.
Marcus stretched and said, "This is a great hill. If we sat here long enough I bet we could write a book about prairie dogs, everything they do. That's a big town down there. There must be several hundred prairie dogs down there, maybe more. We'll have to do a census."
While we talked about how we could count them and figure out who was who, it became ever more interesting. Marcus had some good ideas, and it was exciting to plan to write a book.
" Hey," enthused Marcus, "maybe we can do a video too. 'Life in a Prairie Dog Town', like a documentary."
" We can use my GoPro camera."
" The one you used to video me letting your raccoon go?"
" Yeah," I said. "Wow! That seems like about a year ago and it was only last week."
" You know," said Marcus. "I always figured someone was gonna catch me, sooner or later, while I was roaming around at night. I sure am glad it was you."
We had a hug and kiss break then. It was wonderful to be sitting on top of a grassy hill alongside Marcus, with the serene landscape spread out before us and exciting plans for the future. Every kiss we shared seemed in a mysterious way to be the perfect expression of it all.
" You know," I said. "Something else we could do out here is a vision quest. We could do it on this hill."
" A vision quest?"
" Mmhmm. Native American boys our age used to go off into the wilderness and sit out all night. Then sometimes they'd have a vision or meet their spirit animal."
" At night?"
" Yeah," I said. "We come up here around sunset and sit, and stay awake all night, just sitting quietly, sorta open ourselves up to the natural world."
" It sounds great," said Marcus. "Let's go have supper and then come back here before dark."
" Uh, Marcus?"
" Yeah?"
" There's nothing dangerous out here is there? Like wolves or bears or anything?"
" Not that I've ever heard of, no big predators at all. It's not really natural, but it's safe."
We stood up, and immediately there was a bark and a scurrying at the base of the hill. All the prairie dogs disappeared.
" I like those guys," I said. "I wonder if they'll ever trust us enough not to hide when they see us."
" I doubt it," said Marcus as we trotted down the slope. "We're probably the most dangerous animals out here, and they'll always be afraid of us."
We had a swim while our one-pot supper was cooking. I knew we should purify ourselves for our quest so we scrubbed each other all over with sand from the river's shore.
Supper was delicious. Everything we cooked outdoors tasted better. I looked across my lentil stew at Marcus and said, "You're sure you wanna do this?"
" This vision quest thing?"
" Yeah."
" Absolutely! I mean, I don't expect a vision or anything but it's an interesting thing to do. I'm glad you knew about it. It's a great idea."
We brushed our teeth, left our knives in the tent and walked, naked and clean, toward our vision quest hill.
When we reached the top of the hill, the sun was sinking below the horizon. By the time we sat down cross-legged, back to back, and wrapped the sleeping bag around us, night was rapidly falling. The twilight slowly drained away and we were enveloped in darkness. The moon had not yet risen, and the only light came from the stars. We chatted a bit, but silence seemed more fitting. About midnight, Marcus suggested we change our positions to sit front to front. He spread his legs open and I sat down in his lap with my legs wrapped around his back. His legs folded around me. Our fronts were pressed together. I put my right arm over his shoulder, my left arm under his arm, and clasped my hands together on his back. He did the same and we rested our chins on each other's shoulders.
" This way we can hold each other up," said Marcus. "Even if we fall asleep we won't fall over."
The night air was cool, but we were warm within our cocoon. I drifted in and out of sleep. I think Marcus did too, but we didn't speak. Sometimes I had a boner, and sometimes Marcus did, and sometimes both of us had boners. Our penises were twined together in a friendly way. It was like they had their own cozy conversation going on down there. The moon rose, and the prairie spread out before us in a black and silver panorama. The immense silence was only broken by the occasional call of a nighthawk and once, the soughing wings of an owl passing overhead. At one point I came awake in that state of happiness I had experienced the previous night, and I held Marcus tightly, floating in joy, to be there, on planet earth, with him in my arms. His arms tightened around me and we swam together through the night, while the moon sailed across the sky.
As gray dawn light seeped over the landscape, I stirred. Marcus pulled me closer and said, "Let's not move until the sun is up. I'm too happy to let this go right now."
When the first rays of the sun warmed our cheeks, we threw the sleeping bag aside and stretched and kissed. As soon as we stood up I heard a bark from below, but not a sharp warning bark. I looked down at the prairie dog town, and hundreds of them were standing at the mouths of their burrows looking up at us.
I felt like a rock star. "They're all looking at us," I said in awe.
" They're not running to hide," marveled Marcus.
" Let's wave," I said and we both waved down to them. They started moving around then, cleaning around their burrows and checking on their neighbors.
We didn't speak on the way back to the campsite, but with one mind set to making breakfast the instant we arrived. Once our bellies were full of oatmeal, we crawled into the tent and were soon deeply asleep.
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
