My cousin Amelia and I, still drenched in the day’s aromatic cocktail of sunscreen and Deet, walked down to the dock. We walked slowly, watching for skittish garter snakes, and coiled, patient rat snakes that favored the overgrown grass surrounding the shed. We untethered the green canoe that bobbed gently in the crystal-clear water. This was the first year we were allowed out by ourselves, something that we took great pride in as eleven-year-olds. We began to paddle out, me in the front, her in the back. Unable to agree on who paddled when, and unwilling to hear each other’s argument, we pinwheeled our way into Bill’s Bay, instead of the swift gliding that we had envisioned in our heads. We slowly wobbled our way over the water, fighting the whole time. At last, we arrived at our destination, which was a few hundred yards from our starting point, a short and tumultuous voyage. This was technically our second trip out; the first time our paddling skills were just as poor. Earlier that afternoon, we had been in the same bay, and chaos ensued.
“There’s a spider on you,” she nonchalantly mumbled.
“There’s a WHAT?” I froze with fear, imagining one of the tarantula-sized fishing spiders that lurked under our dock.
“Just kidding,” Amelia giggled, as if that was hilarious.
Oddly enough, she was not kidding, and a daddy long-legs crawled over the shoulder pad of my yellow life jacket. Gracefully, I leapt up, screeching “get if off, get it OFF!” causing the canoe to tip violently from side to side. Figuring that my peace of mind was more important than whether or not our family’s canoe capsized, I stood my ground.
“I told you I was kidding because I KNEW you’d do this!” Amelia rolled her eyes and tried to encourage the tiny monster off of my shoulder as I flailed about.
“Is it off?” I asked anxiously, not risking a look.“No. Here, I can’t stand, too. Let me try this.” She hoisted her paddle out of the water, and began whacking my life jacket, probably indifferent as to whether or not I fell in.
“Tree! On the right!” I shouted, using my own paddle to push us away from shore.
“There, got it!” she triumphantly said, like this act granted her membership into the Avengers or Justice League.
Returning to the spiderless evening, we drifted into blooming white and yellow water lilies. For such a pretty flower they really do smell like cat pee. Amelia leaned against the wooden bar in the middle of the vessel and cast a lure into a perfect fishing spot along our neighbor’s shoreline. I sat and watched the sunset reflecting off the water like a Monet painting.
“What is that?” I sat up suddenly.
“Probably a fish,” she muttered without looking.
“No, its head is above water.”
“A snake then.”
“It’s got fur.”
At this she finally glanced up.
“Maybe it’s a muskrat?” she suggested.
“It’s too big,” I rebuked, and she knew it too.
“A dog?” Amelia tried. Logical, our neighbors had dogs.
We kept staring and nodded our heads that it was one of their dogs, perhaps fetching a soggy tennis ball, or just out to cool off. That conclusion fell apart as the creature dipped its head underwater. We watched it submerge and waited for it to come back up. It did not.
“Well, crap. Probably not a dog, it’s been under too long,” I observed.
“Then what is it?”
“Okay, maybe it’s a person. We’re kind of far away, they could have long hair covering their face,” I hypothesized.
“Yeah, that’s probably it.”
We went back to our casting and skygazing but kept one eye on our mystery company. Our attention was delightfully torn away, as a fish tore off beneath us with her bait. We leaned over the rim and watched as her rod bent into a trembling arc. Alas, the fish made away, taking the foot of her rubber frog with it. It was even a big one too, one worth bragging about. She could have gotten her picture taken with it, holding it out as far as possible to make it look larger.
“Um, is that swimming around us?” Amelia suddenly looked concerned.
“Yeah.” We got quiet with worry, as our guest was making wide circles around us.
“What is that?” she whispered. It clearly was not a person, or a dog, or any of our previous assumptions.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s leave.”
“Right now.”
We grabbed our paddles, and in a remarkable feat, glided in a perfectly arrow-straight line away from whatever that thing was. We stopped around the marshes and algae across the way near Camp Red Cloud and sighed with relief. We had escaped. The joy, however, was cut short: mosquitos murderously swarmed our heads, the sky was a proper blood orange, and dinner was probably ready. It was time to head home. We deftly used our newly acquired skills and paddled back to the cottage, pausing briefly to admire a loon that had popped its head out of the water. Perhaps it had come up just in time, as the nightly chorus of loon calls echoed over the islands, as if Opinicon Lake was secretly a water globe or marble that we lived in a month out of each year. We hastily tied down the canoe and ran up to the cottage, prepared to amaze our parents and grandparents with our horrifying saga: the fuzzy Loch Ness monster of Rideau Lakes. We opened the creaking screen door and announced our presence, as breakfast for dinner was being assembled.
“You won’t believe what we saw in the bay!” Amelia started.
“There was this huge thing and it started circling around us!” I added, nodding.
“Oh, you saw a beaver?” my aunt replied.
“No, this couldn’t have been a beaver, this was gigantic,” we scoffed.
“Yep, beavers can get up to 70 pounds,” our grandmother chipped in.
A beaver? We spent all that energy to escape the evil wrath of a beaver. Perhaps if we had not fled, if we would have waited around long enough, it would have slapped its famous tail, causing a kersmash to reverberate throughout the channel. We sat side by side, eating our blueberry Krusteaz pancakes and imagined a ravenous were-beaver chomping down on our family canoe.
Katie Volz is a second-year student at the Penn State University Park campus. Always having a love for writing, she is pursuing her studies in English and medieval archaeology. In her free time, she enjoys writing mysteries, discovering underrated Broadway musicals, and entertaining her beagle, Lucy. Katie grew up in State College, Pennsylvania, and hopes to continue her writing and archaeological studies at graduate school in the United Kingdom.