Seriously!  It’s like she’s in on the joke!  Sure, Mark, I have no doubt Editor Bill Ellis, who is probably still neck deep in paperwork from your trip to the Great Dismal Swamp after the 50-footer he rented for your enjoyment ended up as kindling, would rent you another boat for your next great adventure…  This is funny, too, in that we never had a shred of push-back in the past… Mark would announce his plan, Cherry would cry and hug his wooden body, and Mark would explain that “this is his job, and that his job takes him away from home periodically…”

Looks like the snowshoe rabbit, still out of range, has yet to take on his summer coat (still?!?) and is toying with a Lynx, still no doubt famished after whiffing repeatedly in his attempts to eat Beaver…

Rule #1- Make the lie believable but do go into such great detail as to appear rambling and nervous about the whole thing…

• Old Friend “Mississippi Ken…”
• He and Kelly (Whom Cherry does not know) enjoying Life in the Gulf (sorry, but again, are they fish??)
• A Shark that Ken caught has some kind of problem…
• Mark declares, “I have to go down there to check it out…”

Rule #2- Make awkward hand gestures to accompany and enhance your story

Rule #3- Don’t ask permission, just say what you are going to do…

Now that’s the Mark Trail I grew up with… Welcome back, Mark!

Never mind the fact that this could all be taken care of by someone imminently more qualified than Mark Trail… But we do need to get him out of the house and adventuring again…so get out of here you big lug- hit the road!

First call, Woods and Wildlife Magazine…  from whence money for travel and special equipment springs…  Who else is Mark going to call in on this mystery, though?  While he has a knack for sniffing our poachers and other bad humans, he drew the line at bugs and called in the USDA, so now we are to believe that he can properly diagnose a dead and ulcerous shark?

Well, it looks like Barney and Betty got Busy!  Time can stand still or it can fly by in the Trail-verse…  Now we have a whole beaver village going on…

“Well, I suppose I could come down and take a look…  not like I have a thousand other things pulling at my apron strings here at Lost Forest…  You do realize, old friend, that if I do choose to engage on this, it will be for a while and trouble will surely follow my every step or my name’s not Mark Trail…”

Big eyes Ken is pouring it on thick…  he wants the Trail so badly I am sure you can hear it in his voice…

So… Mark is a Marine Biologist now?  Specializing in shark mortality?  Well, it seemed to work for George Costanza…  I don’t think Mrs. Moose is buying any of it…

Fishing, like a tonic, like a cold drink after a long, dusty walk, Mark can feel his pulse quickening, his hopes rising, his prospects burgeoning…

But oh, the buzzkill…  The tone in Ken’s voice can’t even be imagined.  There must bet something eco-awful going down, otherwise he wouldn’t be calling!  What, does it have two heads?  Three eyes?  Some awful mutation borne of man’s continued impact on Mother Earth??

Nice Smartphone by the way… and he even knows how to hold it now!   Welcome, Mark, to 2015!

… it’s the green geese that are unnatural here…  fresh in from northern climes, they land in the gulf with the same hue reserved for jeeps, boats, motors and other inanimate objects…

And it looks like Ken and Kelly are in a longer term relationship- one that would allow them to have “history” in Mark’s mind along with another incredibly unfortunate nickname…  Foxylocks?  that’s straight of of the 70’s (along with her hairdo and general style sense) it sounds like something one would hear over a CB radio… kcchhh… breaker one nine, breaker… Foxylocks, you out there?  What’s over your shoulder, sweetheart?  come on back now??”

And Ken, you’d be living on the Gulf, not in it, not unless you sprouted gills…

Wonder if they got the hanging sign from a traveling band of Gypsies specializing in making stuff out of random scraps of wood…  Have router, will sign…  cash only please, we don’t believe in banks…  all the money stays with the head of the family…

Next we see Andy recoiling in horror at the site of yet another mound  of slop dished up in a giant red bowl with his name boldly emblazoned upon it… Like it would be another dog’s bowl?  Like there could be another dog??  Sourced from the same Band of Gypsies?  Does Rusty have one just like it only it says “RUSTY” on it?

But for the main course, here’s Mark talking to his old friend, “Mississippi Ken…”  Who is about to tell Mark all about the dead shark he caught, which Mark will no doubt consider fascinating- much more fascinating than feeding the dog, and off he will go…  “Still growing your hair long?” Mark wants to know… but what he’s really asking in the presence of Cherry is “I know you are with some underage babe…  she got a friend?  I’ll be right there, even though it means a drive from northern Georgia all the way to the Gulf Coast!!”