Let’s not get all mussed up in front of the kid, OK Honey??

Such awkwardness… Cherry gets all moon-faced and and wraps her arms around Mark.  And it would seem that Mark is either sick of driving after that long trip with Rusty or he’s actually thinking about the family budget- Airport parking rates can add up, especially when he’s likely to be in South Dakota for a couple of months…  Make sure you pack enough underwear, Mark!!

OK, enough with the prattle… besides, what on earth is that deer in the first panel doing, looking straight up??  Very strange behavior.  But then, I’m not a deer.

Well, have fun on your trip Mark.  I have a feeling this time we won’t be wondering what’s going on “back at the ranch…”  Oh, that’s right, Mark is going to a Ranch… and a Ghost Town.  Oooooooooo……

This is once again becoming excruciating.  It’s like James Allen has a “See and Say” pulls the cord, and watches as the arm spins… What kind of animal will I feature today?  Doesn’t matter what’s indigenous where…  tomorrow we will probably be blessed with Polar Bear!

Sure!  Let’s go to Mexico!  I’m sure no one will be mad at us there!  Let’s make sure we get a complete set of “Make America Great Again” hats… that will be awesome!!

Yeah… some gear.  I can see Rusty bobbing about above a reef when a large tide pulls him out to sea… careful Rusty- this is all an elaborate plan to take you out of the picture!

We’ve heard this one before… the promise of a “trip…” Just you and Rusty… Right, Mark?

What a lame-o excuse though, “sometimes my trips can get a little hectic.”  What the heck does that mean??  In the words of Obi Wan, Rusty, “Your destiny lies along a different path” than Mark’s.  You need to stay home and be marauded by Dirty Dyer… thought we forgot about him, huh?  Nope, Dirty’s coming to do a little hunting of his own…

…you know, like in one of those Wild West shows that used to travel about…  He’s really from Camden, NJ but grew tired of life in the shadows of tall buildings, so after he got his film degree, he moved to the Great Plains where he found his true identity with the First Nations People and they accepted him, not unlike Dustin Hoffman’s Character in Little Big Man, from which he found inspiration while learning to make films…

The comics-time continuum has snapped back to real time, as we are asked to endure the entire ride home from the fishing grounds… Maybe we get to see something different next week…

Poor Rusty.  Even from a distant, moving vehicle we can see that he is staring out his window, rapidly losing interest in the topic that he started… That’ll learn ya, boy!

So, you got that?  Nature just feeds on itself in one big, virtuous cycle…  How fitting that the raven is overlooking the proceedings today.  Perched expectantly in a Magnolia tree, a sign that may prairie dogs will soon meet their fate, if not Cherry at the hands of Dirty Dyer… remember him??

Prairie dogs exist to feed and house the rest of the animal kingdom?  Do they know this?  Why aren’t they doing something about it?  Nature sure can be cruel…

At least the vehicles that mark drives now have headrests and seatbelts… unlike the International SUV’s of yore- bench front seat, no head restraint, and no shoulder (or even seat) belts…

Ahh, poor Rusty lad… realizing that he will always come in second place to whatever Mark is doing, or about to do… that he will only ever fit in on the margin of what is Mark’s raison d’etre.

So, with that pouty face locked into and burned onto our retinas, let’s hope that Mark is on the plane to SD next.  But I suppose Rusty deserves an answer to his question, so we will have to endure the ride back to Lost Forest just a little longer, kids…

As we make the fishing trip last another day, we are witness to the riveting repartee between Mark and his adopted son…

And once again we are reminded that Mark leads a life that is utterly devoid of deadlines and real commitments, given that he continues to live rent free under the roof of one Doc Davis, father of Cherry Trail (nee Davis) which Mark expects to inherit, through his wife, in order that he never know what a mortgage payment looks like…  OK maybe I ride that note a little long and hard, but it’s always struck me that Mark has little visible means of support, yet never has to make the difficult choices that I’m sure many of us do…

…and Rusty’s face is one of them…  You know, if they’d take him somewhere for a proper haircut, rather than subject him to (I’m assuming) Doc’s amature attempts, that would be a start…

But to know whether Mark’s grammar is correct (and it usually is) one has to make a decision as to whether the word than is a conjunction or a preposition.  “You have caught more <fish> than I have, Rusty!” If we consider the case for conjunction, then Mark is correct in using the  subjective form of the personal pronoun I, but if we consider than a preposition, then he ought to be using the objective form, me.  Further, in the conjunction case, I, could Mark have simply ended his exclamation without the word have? As in “You’ve caught more than I, Rusty!” That doesn’t “sound” correct.  But the biggest dilemma has to do with Cherry’s seemingly ineffective attempts to home-school the young shut-in… He needs to understand that his use of the word till as a replacement for until is incorrect!  A till, of course, is a placae where money is stored, whereas ’til would be a usable form of until, if we are to accept such sloppiness in our diction.

At any rate, Mark is satisfied that he has fulfilled his fatherly duties for the year, so we are not likely to be in touch with Rusty for a while now…  savor the moment.