Tom the Jr. Ranger makes a startling discovery! And let’s the world know about it!! I wonder if this is the first time he has found something other that a deer in his deer trap? Or is there a sign on the trap that says, “Deer Only?”

Vocalization, as compared to thought balloons, is a feature of the Trailverse. Why leave people wondering what’s on your mind when you can just spit it out?!

Another thing comes to mind- This story is wrapping up in a decidedly non-Allenesque timeframe… What’s it been? A week? If this were driven by the latest, now former steward of the franchise, we would have had to endure weeks of (non) action while Andy moldered in the dank box…

And it’s a good thing that there is a Veterinarian in the house… Doc Davis! Well, he’ll have Andy pumped full of fluids in no time…

…or at least were… back in the day…

If Mark wins? Please! Don’t go spoiling things with lack of faith and sincerity- sort of like Linus in the pumpkin patch… not if the Great Pumpkin shows, it’s when he shows!

Poor Mark! He is despondent! On the verge of breakdown! Cherry floats in the background unsure what to do about all this- this situation (which some have pointed out in the comments) brought about as a result of her banishing poor Andy after his tangle with the Skunk!

…but note the plural on traps. Is this the trap that Andy and Tabby wandered into to escape the rain? Or one of many set up to trap unsuspecting animals? I mean, these are not discriminating! Anything with enough weight and curiosity could find themselves trapped… a bear even!

Talk about picking things up in the middle… For those of you new(er) to the Trailverse, the “Bill” Mark is talking to is none other than Bill Ellis, Editor of “Woods and Wildlife” magazine, Mark’s primary source of work and, I would imagine, income… Although it’s never made clear whether Mark is a contractor or on the payroll…

Oh, poor Mark! He is really down!! Will he be able to go on with life? His literal and virtual right hand taken from him?! Only in the comics, though, can man and beast be frozen in time, never age, and never succumb to the natural forces of life… Mark and Andy (and Cherry for that matter) in their prime, not having to yield…

Speaking of Frozen in Time, I stumbled upon this site featuring original Dodd artwork… Interesting!!

Must be a slow news day in and around Lost Forest…

Seriously! How can Mark, in good conscience, put on his one and only travel suit and board a plane for New York City to accept some cheesy award while his canine-brother-in-arms is missing? Do we not remember how Mark and Andy came to be? That look on Mark’s face tells us all we need to know, campers.

Also, we know that we are back in the “Elrod” era as all of the dailies devote at least one panel to a furry or feathered friend!!

Wow! The tension has really been building in my absence…

Doesn’t the owner of the “trap” ever check his traps? Is this a DNR trap? A Poacher trap? One might think I’d remember how this story ends up, other than Andy be recued, of course… but this is all new to me, again…

There’s Doc Davis! Returned from the wood-shed or some such thing!

Fans of the strip know that Rusty’s face can take on frightening transmogrifications… that third panel is almost too much to look at… Way to soothe his fears, Mark!

DAYS pass… And so now it’s sinking in… using the past tense… <Andy> WAS so much part of our lives… Goodness! Mark, are you getting ready to bawl?

With Andy and Tabby caught in the deer trap, we see them from inside. The dimensions of the trap have grown enormously, looking more like the inside of a cabin than the 4x4x8 foot deep enclosure that sprang closed on them…

Tabby, you really are useless. Is it any wonder your former owners abandoned you to a new fate? Other than the smile on your face, what good are you? Tell me whose life is better since your arrival… Certainly not Andy’s!

Meanwhile, back at Lost Forest…

“Crawled under a rock?” That’s interesting phrasing Mark… How about “They probably found shelter” or something like that…

Cherry is doing her job – worrying. Mark is doing his job – maintaining denial. Andy is doing his job (important for a working breed) – staying trapped and raising the level of anxiety. Well done, Everyone!

Another thing that happened in 1981- WHAM! (the Pop Duo) formed and well, the rest is history… Wake me up before you go-go!

…so as Andy finds himself incarcerated in the deer trap (is there/was there ever really such a thing? For what purpose would there be a deer-sized live- trap?? Forced relocation? Poaching?)

Anyway, like I said, he’ll be in there for a while… so lean back, Trail-heads, there’s a long haul ahead.

…for me at least. This is terribly ironic. In the comments a few days ago I told of how I got “Hooked on Trail.” It was a story line about how Andy got himself caught in a deer trap…

…and well, what do you know…

…there it is! This is so interesting! It seemed (in 1980 or so) that it took for-ever for Andy to get out. Let’s see how well this story holds up (drags out) 40 years later! And what of the little dates in the strips? They are tracking with the current month. Did they go back to find a story that would do that without having to replace the dates?

Guess what, Campers, the year is 1981! This calendar synchs with 2020!

…like having only a minor sense of dread over Andy’s well-being. He’s a principal (or is it principle?) character, so it’s not like he isn’t going to survive this scrape.

It looks like Andy gets his licks in, but ultimately the wild dogs have bigger fish to fry. Besides, St. Bernard probably doesn’t suit their palate…

“Attackers retreat?” Interesting phrasing there… I think they just got bored. Need to find a new challenge, a new opportunity to terrorize the countryside… Besides, what does one do with wild dogs other than shoot them? It’s not like there is a canine reform school where they’d go to try to turn their lives around…

Tabby, Andy rues the day you walked into his life. Now he doesn’t just smell, he’s wounded and in need of help! What good are you?

Why do we spell words the way we do? Vi-shus. There… How difficult was that? Why do we have homonyms like there, their and they’re? I really feel for people trying to learn English as a second language. And don’t even get me started on idioms! Our discourse (dis-cors) is replete with words and phrases (frases?) if taken literally, make no sense at all… Piece of cake! Can of Corn! Cats and Dogs!

But of course, “Wild Dog,” while potentially idiomatic, needs to be taken quite literally here… as Tabby and Andy find themselves in their midst.

Tabby, they should name you Little Miss Prance-About… because that’s what you appear to be best at doing! The picture of innocence, until of course your naivete lands you in trouble!

Well, let’s hope that Andy’s recently bestowed stink helps him overcome a decidedly outnumbered and disadvantaged position…

Unclean!! Poor Andy! Water ain’t gonna do it, friend…

Andy so sad… breaks my heart! Look at his face! Longer that the horse’s!

C’mon, people, get with it! Mark= Blue; Cherry = Red! I hate when they mess that up!

But Tabby is off and running!! With Andy keeping an eye on her (like he was told to do…) for sure this is going to get Andy another scolding!!

And it’s Andy the Gallant to the rescue! Under the category of “Let no good deed go unpunished…”

…Andy gets a face-full of stink-juice… Check out the hand-stand the skunk is pulling off… do they really do that?? I’m not so sure… Poor Andy… he’s having a baaaaad day… Look at the smirk on Tabby’s face! HA-HAW, This is fun!!! Looks like it’s Tomato Juice for you, Old Friend!

Poor Joe Morgan, his farm terrorized by wild dogs!! But wait a gol-darned second! Is Cherry bursting in on Mark… writing?? Is that a Computer? A Cathode Ray Tube?? We have never seen Mark actually write an article, they always just sort of appear as if by magic in a future reference- “Loved your article on the Lovelorn Manatees of Coastal Florida, Mark…”

So damn the dogs, let’s sit up and take notice of this brief glimpse behind the scenes of Mark Trail!

I have to draw notice to a link in a comment posted Friday:

The Mark Trail of Yore was a hobo- a Vagabond Vet in 1946, speaking no sense whatsoever- What, did Andy (property of Doc Davis) get drafted into the Army and assigned to Mark? Did we always know that Doc Davis’ first name is “Tom?” Scan the entire link- it’s fascinating.

And no, I don’t see where they are going to stop the re-runs… I guess we’ll have to stay tuned!

Change is hard, my friends, very hard. I awoke this morning with a challenge: WordPress, my faithful blog platform, has forced me into its new “Block Editor” interface, which is causing me to have to re-learn how to post on The Daily Trail… Oh well, keeps the brain nimble even as I head in into the final year of my 6th decade on this earth…

But what’s going on at the Breakfast(?) table? Doc is reading the paper, announcing a scourge of some sort… and while Mark and Doc clean up with sleeves rolled up, Mark takes stock of whether they are prepared:

Yes indeed, it’s the old Wild Dog Scare…

They look more like wolves to me… and it’s curious what’s happening in the third panel- appears the dogs are arguing more amongst themselves than threatening livestock…

Or telegraph?  Cherry has to pick up on the fact that Mark will win a major award and probably have to go to New York by reading the paper?

And oh my goodness!  There’s Rusty!  Managed to make his way home from the bus stop without any help from Andy!  That’s impressive!  He also appears to be totally invisible!  Ignored!!  That’s the Mark Trail I grew up reading!

I also have to remark that Mark does seem quite a bit younger in these classic strips brought back and colorized…  while he always seemed to be stuck in his 30’s, here he looks more like a younger man in his 20’s!  Are he and Cherry married by now?  Has Rusty been adopted yet?  So much to wonder about!

As ‘Tabby’ is introduced to her environs and Andy comes to her rescue…

…only to take heat from the human female for doing exactly what she told him to do…  “Look after Tabby…”

Poor Andy.  People can be so confusing, can’t they?  Tell you to do one thing, scold you for doing it!

The scene in the last strip is so classic!  Coffee in tiny cups with saucers!  Brewed into a Bunn Commercial decanter…  Coffee’s on!  Perpetually!  As they say, life is short, stay awake!  And Jittery!!

As Mark holds forth,  he starts Man-splaining motives of other humans without so much as a clue, only based on a set of assumptions rooted deep in his psyche, his confirmation bias on display for all to see.  Yes, Mark, instead of taking the pet to a shelter where they meet up with almost certain death, the derelict humans dump the kitty on your front lawn.  I like those chances better.

Where’s Rusty?!

…if in fact this is Cherry.  She looks like she could be in high school.  Another thing occurs to me… if these are daily strips taken from the 70’s were they colored at the time?  Or are we taking old dailies and running them through the color mill?  Sort of like the Netflix documentary “WWII in Color.”

But back to the story… Cherry has a great idea for a name!

Oh, Mark, always so agreeable!  Andy looks very happy to have a new responsibility!  But where’s Rusty?  Cherry has had time to (I’m guessing) phone the one or two neighbors that flank Lost Forest, but no time to wonder where in the heck Rusty is.  Remember, Andy was going to meet Rusty at the bus stop when he was distracted by the cat… Seems we have ALL forgotten about the lad…

In an attempt to say, “See? Jack Elrod was prone to these insipid storylines, too,” we are treated to days of, well, insipidness.

But in typical fashion, Rusty is about to be forsaken!!  HA!

One thing I never understood about the way Andy has been rendered through the years is his tongue… It’s always sticking out!  Does that somehow make the dog less fearsome?

Apparently it works.  And what do you know?  Andy apparently has been to and passed “Mother Cat 101” at the local community college, otherwise how would he know that he could pick up the little thing by the skin of her neck??  But wait, who is this??

Cherry?  Oh, my goodness!  I have never seen you with this hair-do!  This really does date things a bit.  Also, another clue is the single name “Jack Elrod.”  I we were gong back further in time, then the credit would be “Dodd and Elrod.”  This puts this story sometime after 1978, when Elrod took full control of the strip.

I think it’s funny that our little feline protagonist has friendship and companionship prioritized over more basic things like air, water, food, shelter…

As Abraham Maslow demonstrates, she is bypassing the Physiological, jumping to the middle of the pyramid where Love and Belonging holds sway, and skipping Safety altogether.

Just wait, little one, until your tummy starts to growl and the sun sets and there isn’t a food bowl in sight.  Whatchu gonna do then?  I predict more strips featuring “Sad Kitty Cat” before Former Orphan Rusty stumbles upon her…

…from the Syndicate vault, they chose this one?  Not that I remember ever reading this, and I have been reading Mark Trail since the late 70’s… but this has all the promise of one of Allen’s failed plots.

Do cats really smile, look sad?  Ever?  Panel one shows eternal optimism, panel two joy mixed with anticipation, panel three rejection.  Just how sentient is a domestic house cat?  I suppose there are those whose lives revolve around cats.  They would probably reject my notion.  I have shared space with and grown to appreciate the common house cat Felis Catus and detected feline emotion, but nothing like this.