Tales like this pop up outta nowhere. Probably would have been a good idea if it'd stayed in hiding but my grandson Jakob was nearby. Being nine years old he's about the right age and mindset for this style of story so I laid it on him. Yeah, he did me proud by laughing. Probably had the same image in his head. 'Course it wasn't exactly like what follows but the gist was there. Anyhow, it goes like this:
Once in a while Emil'd catch me off guard. Say something so far out in left field I figured he must have slipped through a hole in time to a world most of us have no clue is there. Yeah, there's other people in the world who do the same thing. Could be you know a few. Odds are you weren't in the same canoe or alone in the boonies with the crazy man like I was.
We were up on the border lakes, believe it was Watap and were sittin' around camp on a late and cloudy afternoon. Watap's a long, skinny lake, not much more than river-wide, with some serious, south shore cliffs touring above piles of rubble that made a campsite near impossible. Instead, we were illegally lounging on the Canadian side gettin' up the energy to start dinner. The plan was eggs and sausages along with a bannock. Nothing fancy but when you're outdoors and hungry, most anything goes down well. First things first, we started with the bread. Emil began by pounding up a ball of dough, worked in a generous dollop of a cinnamon-sugar mixture and raisins, spread it inch thick in the larded pan, browned the bottom of the loaf, then tipped 'er face to the fire we'd built and burnt to coals. While the bread baked I grabbed my rod and wandered down to the water. Not so much with the idea I'd catch anything but heck, we were on the Canadian border. Yeah, I had my hopes.
Those hopes were for smallmouth bass. Back then I had a thing for smallies. Still do. Not sure if it's their red eyes or never-ending fight. Turned out it didn't matter since I didn't hook a one. But I wasn't skunked. No sir, my slip-bobbered jig and pork rind turned up a half dozen walleyes, kept half. In twenty minutes our menu changed. Fresh food trumped store-bought and three fifteen inchers would go down fine with the eggs and bread.
But that's not what this memory's about. I recall it being between walleye's two and three that Emil wandered down from the fire ring. Couple of minutes earlier I'd heard him chuckling to himself. Not a good sign. Emil's solitary chuckle most always meant he was working up something to share. Since mine was the only set of ears within ten miles that meant me. For a moment I considered grabbing the Grumman and paddling to mid-lake 'til he calmed down. Instead I stood my ground, continued to fish and took my medicine like the man I hoped to become.
He didn't jump right in. Waded in like the water was cold. Seemed Emil was never in a hurry when he was bustin' a gut to let something out. Watched me fling a few casts. Even let me hook up and land a walleye before he started,
"Last August I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Been havin' a nightmare. Don't know how or why, dreams make me figure that out on my own, but the two of us were arm wrestling in Furlong's House of Ill Brew down in Parkers. Me and a dinosaur that is. Big fella. One of them tyrannosaurus rex's with the little arms. No more than forty inch biceps. Long story short, I beat it (not sure if it was a boy or girl. Didn't figure it was my place or anywhere near wise to peek down there.). Actually tore its arm off. Chartreuse blood shootin' out everywhere. Talk about pissed. Last thing I recall was the big, yellow teeth just before they woulda snapped my head off."
"Woke up in the morning thinkin' there was a message in that dream. Maybe something to do with beer, bars, arms or extinction. Figured the latter more likely and trotted off to the cities 'cause of their big libraries. Did some research on why and how the dinosaurs disappeared. Checked both the science and science fiction sections. Even checked the Children's Room and read a few stories about a monkey who kept getting in trouble. Found nothing more than wild guesses and conjecture. Turned out it was up to me to solve the mystery."
'Put on my thinking cap - mine says 'Olberding's Equipment and Burial Service' on the front - and headed outdoors to walk my way to a solution. Learned year's ago I figured things out best when afoot. Wasn't more than a couple of blocks when the idea hit me. Squirrels. Down on Hennepin Avenue I came on the biggest squirrel I'd ever seen, staring down from a sign atop the entrance of a strip joint by the name of 'The Copper Squirrel.' You don't believe me, have a look for yourself. Struck me the combination of big squirrel on the outside and naked truth inside was just too much of a coincidence to ignore. Figured it the voice of God. And kinda like Jesus hanging out with the lower classes. Christ were to come back you wouldn't find him sailing on Lake Minnetonka. No sir, he'd be down here with the hooligans and hookers. And just maybe a sod buster from up in Parkers Prairie seeking an answer of great historic import."
"Gave it a few turns around the block and came up with an answer. All the books said not everything died when the dinosaurs took a hike. Nope, it seems the scroungers did just fine. Small rodents and whatnot. Got me wondering why. Then I recalled a picture of some fossils from about the same time, near a hundred million years ago. Wasn't much more than some softball-sized, oval-shaped tracks in the rock. The scientists gave those tracks some convoluted latin names that made no sense to me. What did make sense was their size, shape and that they were mixed in with some bone prints."
"Puttin' two and two together, a little interpretation, and a dash of interpolation I figured those ovals to be nuts. Most likely acorns and walnuts. Could be those dinosaurs were allergic to nuts. That took care of the herbivores but what about the carnivores? Aha! They were eatin' the small mammals. 'Course we wouldn't have seen them as bein' small. Figure them as dog-sized squirrels."
"All well and good but my idea still seemed too complex to be right. After all, the simplest solution is usually the right one. Gave some thought to modern day squirrels, mice and chipmunks. Also to Disney cartoons. Also to the trees drawn in the books at the library. Saw the big picture and the solution was obvious."
"Back when the dinosaurs disappeared there were palm trees that grew giant acorns and walnuts. Near the size of coconuts. Now palm trees don't have branches. No place for a rodent to store nuts. So they used the only cavities of size they could find and stuffed their stash up the backsides of the dinosaurs. 'Course that plugged the beasts up something awful. Fatally even. Over a few decades they all died off. The more the big guys ate, the quicker they died. The quicker they died, the more rodents that survived to stuff nuts up the backsides of dinosaurs and so on. Makes sense to me. Could even be that's where our saying 'cram it with walnuts' comes from."
'Bout then I had my third keeper. Time for dinner. "You know Uncle Emil, I kind of have to agree with you. As to your solution of the extinction mystery, there's no doubt in my mind that it's nuts."
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