Not only are you suffering under the withering admonishments of a decorated and published naturalist, but now you have gone and pissed off your girlfriend!!  And it’s for the best, you know?  She would be bringing up that “snake thing” for years…

As Lori turns on her heel and stomps off (uh, to where exactly?) we see Chris “Dirty” Dyer’s plans go up in smoke.  I am still very curious as to how exactly he was going to monetize his illegal cargo; you know, meet up with buyer, get money, find “Carlson” again and give him his 60% (a 40% cut for delivering Rhino horn?  Not bad, actually) all without having any of his party suspect that he is up to something funny.  Throughout this experience, Chris has shown a complete lack of ability to plan any number of moves ahead- he seems to be more like a single cell animal, just bumping into shit and reacting…

That was really starting to bug me… too lazy to go back and look, I had resorted to calling him “That guy that Mark came to Africa to see…”  But Mark!  Let “Ol’ Dirty” answer your question!  Let him spin a web of lies and deceit!  That would be at least entertaining!  You ask him a question and then immediately assume that he is guilty (which he is of course…)

But I ask you- is there a better scolding than one dished out by Mark Trail where Poaching is involved??  I don’t think so… There is a special place in Hell for the likes of you, Chris Dyer…

Lori looks, at best, nonplussed by this turn of events…  C’mon, girl, where’s your outrage, your indignation?  Or are you just in shock after Hippo, Buffalo, Python and now Rhino??

What Th—Well, Chris “Dirty” Dyer, the gig is up!  Or “what the hell were you thinking?” Oh I know, I will place a tarp over this unlocked box and no one will be any the wiser…  certainly no one will notice this anvil case that wasn’t here before…  And Trail, this is where your life becomes expendable…  Remember how not a soul even knows that you went on safari with these two random people- one a dentist and the other just plain bad, rotten to the core??

The look on Mark’s face says it all, though.  This is the height of bad, the lowest of the low.  Worse than Turtle Eggs!!  Worse than Shining Deer!!  This is World-Wide, Cross Borders, Interpol kind of stuff!  And you are in the middle of it Mark!  Who’s going to believe that you aren’t involved?  Think, man, think!!

Springbok Antelope, a Cheetah’s favorite prey, are really quite amazing to watch…

A lot more interesting than this story line…

Dirty doesn’t have facial hair (the tip-off to being a bad guy) but as long as he is sporting that Dolph Lundgren look, we can’t really trust him, can we??  And as he snarls in displeasure (AGAIN!!) at Mark playing the hero with the one he sees making his life whole, certainly no good can come of this…  Remember he was going to lure Mark out into the “Tall Grass” only to be trampled by a Cape Buffalo herd?  His work is clearly not done here…

Oh Chris, you don’t know Mark like we know Mark do you?  Being a “Hero” is all in a day’s work for him…  he thinks little of it, the fact that he often inserts himself between life and death with little regard for his own safety.  He knows better than any of us that this strip is named after him, and what would James Allen do if Mark were to suddenly come to an untimely end?  Start writing a strip called “Rusty Trail?”  I think not…

Every now and then the artwork and the backgrounds turn into a bit of a “What doesn’t fit in this picture” Game…

Panel 1:  Taurus running in the fields of green holding onto his red whistle (there’s that again…) the plane, boss, the plane!

Panel 2:   Chris Dyer preaching/ declaring/ gesturing awkwardly that “this Safari is officially over.”  With purple mountains’ majesty as a backdrop, almost as is he has returned from seeing a burning bush and is in possession of the stone tablets…

Panel 3:  No background, just a tearful Lori telling a distracted and unfeeling Chris that she was recently attacked by a snake!  You know what?  I don’t think he really cares…

So, as we move this story along, will we ever turn up the bones of the guy that Mark flew down there to see in the first place?  Will Mark be implicated in a smuggling ring now that he is unwittingly helping to ferry contraband?  Will Lori ever get to play something other than the fair damsel, often in distress?  What this strip needs is more strong women!  Like Cherry! BLAM!  Remember??

I have been studying the first panel for a while now (I know, it’s time to get a life…) and I can’t get my bearings…  Is Mark standing on a king size cot that Lori warrants as she is the Queen of the Safari?  Is e standing on the floor with the bed all askew and blankets and linens everywhere?  And what about that basket on the left?  Is that a clothes hamper?  Is that where the snake was all coiled up, lying in wait??

No Mark, she’s NOT “All Right…”  I think we can assume that much.  She’s as “All Right” as anyone who has had a near-death experience…  And notice how she’s not calling out for Chris…  This just keeps getting deeper and deeper.  She might as well have let the snake take her as compared to the death by a thousand cuts falling in love with Mark Trail represents…

…don’t exhale when a 20 foot constrictor has you in its coils…

…but then that’s a difficult rule to remember.  Rule number 2:  Always, in the heat of the moment, explain exactly what is going down before asking for the appropriate weapon.  Good thing Taurus keeps a fixed blade Bowie Knife on his hip for just such emergencies… Rule number 3:  apply knife blade with sufficient force to head of snake causing it to release its victim…

But on a slightly lighter side, let’s recall Kaa from Disney’s Jungle Book (always a source of accurate depiction of nature and its predator/ prey relationships…)  Voiced by Sterling Holloway (Also with Winnie the Pooh to his credit…) It’s a classic…

Well, at least it wasn’t the guy skulking by the fire, it’s a PYTHON! Pythons generally live in Trees, not tents and cots, but that’s OK, anything to keep the suspense up…  in case this ever happens to you, dear reader, follow the rules as written in this handy e-HOW article…  Apparently constrictors don’t like their tails bitten…  I wonder if Mark has read the same article??

Meanwhile Dirty is loaded down with contraband, while his true love is having the life squeezed out of her…  Grasping for meaning here, folks, but I got nothin’…

On more serious note, this article highlights the plight of the White Rhino and efforts to protect them.

We just can’t let a moment pass without another cry for help… two cries, actually, growing in intensity…  While Mark and Taurus (apparently his real name) get to know each other on a last name basis (Mark is already writing this story in his head- it will surely grab him the Pulitzer or whatever Outdoor writers covet) Lori cries out!  Could it be the shadowy figure running by the fire?  Or is that random porter number 2, who gets to do heavy lifting but doesn’t get to sit at the table with the clients?

So while Mark dredges up what will surely become Ancient Lore, part of the Oral Tradition among Taurus’ People, the story of the Great White Writer who thrust a flaming stick into the mouth of a marauding hippo, heads snap around and wine glasses fly out of hands… LORI!!

Let’s all raise a glass of lovely Pinot Noir in honor of Mark, who has once again proven that his intuition and his mettle go unmatched…

But Oh, Lori…  Such a DQ (drama queen.)  I shall be repairing to MY TENT, you know, the one that I share with no one…  not even the one who would have me, the one who, as I speak my toast, is up to is eyeballs in Rhino Horn…

…men who load trucks, and kill Rhino… While seeming to know an awful lot about Chris and his “issues” with money and gambling…  And Chris has a thing or two to learn about tipping too much of his hand.  If your adversary knows what is driving your behavior, then he owns you…  “Hi, I am Chris Dyer, and just so we are all on the same page, let me tell you all about my problems with gambling and money, and how I need a big score to get out of Dutch with Frankie ‘No Knees’ Castalano…”

Funny how they all seem to go to the same outfitter, though…  for tents and clothes and pith helmets…

Oh my goodness!  “Dirty” is ready to soil himself… just look at the face in panel 2…  And it seems that “Carlson” is unaware that Chris prefers to be called “Dirty…”  Or is Dirty a name that he has only just thought up?  That only Mark knows about?  Carlson is reminding me of the “Cobb” character Brian Dennehy played in the movie Silverado…  Big, Brash, mean, crooked, no conscience…

And yea, back off, Carlson, you need a bath!  Even the Warthog needs to get up-wind of you…

But a TROOP of Baboons…  talk about a harbinger of doom…  I love the one mugging for the camera, Ferris Bueller style…  even got the blue eyes right…  Then there’s the one shooting us a sideways glance…

I think Mr. Allen is having fun, drawing all the animals that he never got to draw under the heavy yoke of Messers. Elrod and Dodd…  Easy there, big guy, managing and producing a daily strip is a marathon, not a sprint…

Now we are getting somewhere!  There had to be a really BAD ACTOR… one with a full beard, to play the part of the heartless poacher.  That “Dirty” is without same, we can assume that he is not beyond redemption.  But boy is he ever up to his neck in bad here…

Judging by his dark hair and swarthy complexion, I am guessing that “Carlson’s” first name isn’t Sven…  but maybe Carlson is his FIRST name…  who knows.  But it certainly seems like Dirty has history with this gang.  That this isn’t his first rodeo…

And let’s review the transaction here.  Carlson has Rhino horns worth big money, Dirty has (with apologies to Amazing Amy)

• (a) “Connections” that will turn them into money,
• (b)  A giant wad of cash stuffed in his shorts to make the “buy,”
• (c)  Something on Carlson that immediately gives him the upper hand, or
• (d)  Delusions of grandeur that will quickly make this encounter turn sour…

As usual, this will play out slowly and clumsily until such time that Mark can confront the bad guys and triumph over their evil.   Will Dirty go down or will he be saved?  That’s the question…

And so the plot thickens.  If not slightly contrived… OK, Really Contrived.  How does a Lady Dentist get wrapped up with a Rhino Horn Poacher replete with gambling debts?  I doesn’t add up at all.  So off he goes, not to “report this crime to the local authorities” but to the “outskirts” where all bad people who shun the light hang out…  Are these the people of the Northern Outskirts or the Southern?  How does one know?  I guess it must be written somewhere in the Bad Guy Guide Book…  Maybe it has to do with what hemisphere one finds oneself…

So while the animals in the water hole practice voluntary segregation, (really, why do we spend so much time forcing and preaching “diversity?” it doesn’t seem natural… but then we are above the animals, right?  I wonder…)  Dirty drives off to take care of his “business” while Mark and Lori, none the wiser (OK, maybe just Lori) head back to camp…

You won’t be so proud of him when you realize that he is a self-dealing, underhanded, lying, weaseling sack of dung…  But hey, who are we to judge??

I hope we get to follow Dirty into town.  I want to see what he’s up to!!

Dirty, you are so full of it the whites of your eyes are turning brown!  Your goal this whole time has been to meet your contact and do your “Dirty” deal…  So suddenly you are quite all right with leaving your “woman” in the care and custody of one Mark Trail…  And in case we want to play the game, “Where in the World is Mark Trail?” Shyanda is in Rwanda, Africa…

Local Authorities…  that’s a good one!  Shyanda appears to almost uninhabited, certainly not a place where “authorities” would hang out…  But it IS the kind of place where nefarious deeds can be concocted and brought to fruition…

Saddest Trail Ever.  Seriously.  This is not the first time we have stuck our toe in the poaching pool, but we have never seen the like of this…

No more words today.

And who is in charge of this Safari, anyway?  Apparently it’s Mark, determined to find out “what caused the buffalo to run through” their camp…  Maybe it’s a “Who” and not a What…”

And there’s Dirty, “betting” again…  sheesh…