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"Can you hear that?" Hannah's voice whispered at me from the cocoons of her sleeping bag. "No" I monotoned back through folds of sleep. In truth I thought I had heard something, but was too sleepy to care that we were about to be eaten alive by foreign beasties. "Don't go back to sleep Joel, there's definitely something out there." That time I definitely heard it too, a wet and warm snuffle and a series of twangs as something large and furry walked into the barbed wire fence, just feet from our tent's door. I could hear the footfalls of a large mammal separated from us only by the paper thin walls of our tent. Over the last few hours camped out at the back of a Spanish picnic area we had been able to hear what sounded like the chiming of a very loud cowbell. We hadn't been woken by its ominous sound recently, but that noise now ambled towards us in the misty night.
Had we inadvertantly made a bedfellow of some horny bull? What if he took a dislike to our presence? What if he
really liked our presence? I'm not sure it is as easy as
saying "no" to a ten foot torro who finds you laying naked in his bedroom. When the hooved footsteps faded away a little and the bell had quietened I lay in half sleep, and I heard Hannah whisper again. "Can we get up?" "What would we do if we got up?" I hissed back, feeling her heart beat as fast as a mouses against my back. No answer to that one.
As we were both fully awake, was there any harm in getting up? We slid out of our vastly inadequate one season sleeping bags and began to slither in to the soggy clothes of the miserable previous day. "I feel like the couple at the start of 'Dog Soliders'" said Hannah as she struggled into her jacket. Great Hannah, thanks, I was only worried about being raped by an animal with testicles as big as your head, now I'm worried about angry man-dogs too. By now I was fully kitted up, helmet on, ready to face man-eating were-bulls.
I unzipped the tent, the zip obnoxiously loud in the drizzly night. Hannah followed, always braved from the rear. My Converse were too horribly wet from a day of
continuous soaking to even consider putting on so I flip-flopped my way through the ghostly thicket, with the ringing of the bell growing louder in my ears. We eased ourselves in turn over the wooden barbed wire fence into the recreation ground. Sat on a slimy wooden picnic bench at ten-past-midnight, clad in flip-flops, leather jacket and an open-faced twat-hat is a farily easy position to find oneself in. Everyone has been there, haven't they?
The moon wasn't even three-quarters full, so the excitement of the were-beast was out of the picture. There was only one thing for it, have a cigarette for thought. Han half rolled a floppy fag using the half soaked rizlas that I'd left in the outside pocket of my jacket all day. As we sat listening to the jangling of our unseen beast in the moon shadowed trees we came to wondering what comes next. I was happy to sit in stalemate with our tormentor, but angry little Han wanted to investigate. She just didn't want to do the investigating herself.
We tiptoed (as best as you can in flip-flops in long grass) up to the edge of the thicket. That's where Han
stayed while I was sent forward as the sacrificial lamb. Ripe for the slaughter, I crept towards the ball and chain rattle. What beast, sent from hell, would I find? A shape darker than the shadows loomed before me out of the night and the bell tolled so loudly it seemed as if in my head. Then I heard a "hgrumph" to my right. Gadzooks, there were more of the creatures.
As the silvery moon slipped out from behind a cloud, our nemesis was silhouetted before me. Taller than me, and twice as broad. I still didn't know what it was though. Four legs? A head? A wall of muscle? I skipped back to Han, mission accomplished-ish and relayed the findings of my recconaissance - which wasn't much.
Buoyed by the fact that I hadn't been ripped limb from limb, Hannah came with me on a second recon. stood at the edge of the paddock we snapped away trying to immortalise the apparition on camera. Despite all our efforts, the only thing we could capture was a pair of ghostly shining eyes.
We returned to bed, our fears slightly allayed by the beasts apparent lack of aggression.
When we woke the nest morning there was only a tiny foal and its mother, both with beautifully braided manes.
I suppose we must have scared the beast away...
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