…is NOT to use your real name…  Nice to meet you, “Mr. Trail…” What, did he sign the guest register “Frank Trail?”  (your blogger rubbing his face in wonder…) And Big Mike, to whom appearance is everything, must dye the hillsides around his lodge green, since the Canadian Geese are taking on a strange green tint on their chinstraps…

And Poor Rusty!  Cherry has laid down the law…  he’ll just have to wait until Mark returns?  What?!?  Mark is GONE, sweetheart, on another one of his “missions…”  who knows when he will return.  And wasn’t rusty allowed to go down to the stream earlier to take PICTURES?  Why would he be tethered now?

For those of you not following and maybe have picked up the story, like, today, Mollie and Oscar are OTTERS in mortal danger of falling prey to poacher traps lining their stream…  I guess it’s wise to not assume that everyone wakes up Monday through Saturday with but one thing on their minds- “what’s happening in the world of Mark, Cherry, and Rusty Trail?  And Cherry’s father, “Doc?” Of course we don’t know what Cherry’s maiden name is, or whatever happened to Cherry’s mother…  did she, like Mrs. Hogwallop, up an’ R-U-N-N-O-F-T??  Was she “lookin’ for answers??”

But do we really need that much Otter face in Panel three?  And such a determined look…  That is not an “unaware” look, by the way…  she knows exactly where she is going… And Rusty, really? Where do you THINK an Otter would go?  To the Local Wal*Mart??  Of course they are heading to the river.  Now Pay attention!

But soft!  What is that lurking in the lower right corner of panel one?!?  A flat screen TV!!!  Right next to the loomed/ woven Indian blanket hanging on the wall at a 45 degree angle!

And Rusty! Besides not “watching the otters,” apparently watching television also makes your right hand and right foot shrink!!  Or maybe that part of you didn’t make it back through the time machine…  Your hand and foot are stuck in the “five years ago” mode when you were six or seven.  If Rusty was allowed to utter an expletive, surely he would be doing so now!

But back to the modern implement…  how is it that every now and then a hint of the present day invades the Trail-verse?  Just to keep us readers on our toes, I suppose… But then where is the satellite dish?  Surely cable can’t have made it to that remote reach, or is Poor Rusty limited to what can be grabbed over the air?  Let’s hope not, since he would be a natural audience for “River Monsters” or anything on NatGEO…  Or is he a fan of Ellen and Oprah?  One can only wonder…

“Now don’t you run off, little otters…”  Yeah, right.  “wanders” my eye…  She couldn’t wait to get away from that cloying little human, much the same way that Mark, Cherry and Doc look for opportunities to ditch and run…  But now we do get to see the expanse of the Lost Forest Compound.  In one direction we see the Horse Barn and Paddock, and looking back the other way, we see the “Big house” with its multiple roof lines…  nestled in the foothills of the southern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains… Nice.  Secluded.  No doubt playing hobs with little Rusty’s mind…  a sense of detachment from the human race.  But not a good sense.  The kind that leaves one convinced that it’s possible to talk to wild animals and have them understand what you are saying…

So run, little otters, while you still have a chance!  Your traps wait!!

To give them names?  But at least Rusty understands that the cute and adorable otters can’t stay with him… but it does look like Oscar the Kit is now the size of Mollie the Mother…  How long has this story been going on?  How’s Ol’ Eddie getting on?  Did he recover from his wounds inflicted by Frankie?  I love that everyone has a name now…

But quickly, Thumper, run!  Run to the big house! You must tell the Master that there is EVIL back in the Forest…  He needn’t get all disguised up and go to Big Mike’s lodge in search of a trophy when Frankie the Henchman is littering the stream with traps…

And don’t ever let anyone tell you different… You only go around once in this life, and if you want to spend it sitting in an overstuffed chair with a glass of good whiskey in your hand, you better take all pelts you can… But really?  Define ”fortune…”  it’s sort of like Ralph Kramden from The Honeymooners… “Norton~ We’re gonna be millionaires…”  While there might be a spanking trade in otter skin coats, how many pelts does it take to make one? Like, 25 or 30?  How many otters could possibly be in a given area? 4 or 5?  So you “clean out a stream,” and you are only 1/5 of the way there, and you still need to gut, clean, mount, stretch, scrape, dry and stack and market said pelts…  So the real money must come from gullible city slickers that come for a taste of big game and will pay through the shorts for a trophy… still, it’s a shaky business model… and not sustainable as evidenced by the fact that this rapacious crew must continue to stretch its domain, even to the point of poaching on protected lands!

Frankie, now Mr. Sideburns Henchman has a name…  seems only too happy to be doing his boss’s bidding.  Family?  I suppose.  I mean, what on earth does HE get out of this deal?  I am sure he lies awake on his cot at night thinking of how he would run things if HE was boss… but no, the cards were not dealt in his favor, so now he must play the role that he has been given… While I am not a fan of organized labor, I really think that Henchmen of the world should unite!  Form a union! Demand stuff!  Your evil bosses are only as good as the people they keep around them…

Meanwhile in panel one, poor Mr. Mouse is about to become raptor scat… mmm, mmm, duddle-dut…

… or is it Deer Father…

…Mark can hardly contain himself with the joy that come when he realizes that we gets to LEAVE LOST FOREST…  Add this data point to the MTTLLF (Mean Time to Leave Lost Forest) data set:  28 days… kind of an outlier when you consider that in some cases he barely leaves enough time for a hug and a shave before he’s off again with a fresh set of underwear on another “assignment…”

Gotta love the fact that Andy, being a large breed dog, is allowed to drool on the table… “Hey, no problem there, friend, you have gotten me out of more than one scrape… slobber away!”

Little fawn is a little shaky… note the “wobble lines” surrounding the hind quarters… “Hey, stop pushing , all right? I am have enough trouble here!”

And what disguise will mark come up with?  This should be good.  Does he own any clothes other than the khaki set he always wears?  Spontaneously sprout facial hair?  What will his back-story be?  How will he have “heard” of Big Mike??

Rusty, what have you been doing?  Or what has Doc done to you?  You’ve been playing with the time machine again haven’t you??  Were the otters involved?  Are we going to have to gene-splice you back to “normal,” whatever that is??  And Mark, please… “friend?” You hardly know this man, you seem to throw that label around with reckless abandon!!  Of course if he were truly a friend, he would have a nick-name (like Bluegill) or the word “Ol’” would have been tacked on for good measure.  Like “Ol’ Eddie the Small time Poacher…” Beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to making friends at Lost Forest… Just ask Rusty!

Stay tuned everyone, that Otter is about to bite off Mark’s friend Jason’s Nose!