for my VT buddy Gary Greene, a good houndman and woodsman.

Years and years ago Gary was hunting on top of Glastenbury Mountain well before light, he had set up in the forked limbs of a big beech and got in his tree so early that he fell asleep.

Along about false dawn he felt a sand paper feeling on his cheek.

thinking it was a leaf, he brushed his face, checked that it was still dark and curled back up only to be woken again by the feel of sandpaper on his cheek.

This time he sat bolt upright and peered around and as he turned he came face to face with a critter that was preparing to lick his face again!

you won' t believe it but it was a giraffe!

Right there on top of Glastenbury Mountain in the southern green montains of Verrrrrrmont!

He was so startled that he lost his balance and fell right on top of the giraffe who proceeded to lick his face and ears like he was it' s cub, fawn or whatever little giraffes be called.

well, it was fairly comfortable on topside of that beast and warmer than his tree so he stayed there most of the morning as they walked all over the mtn.

His great undoing came about when a monsterous 14 point buck stepped out and he shot without a thought from his great moving tree stand.

He hit the buck alright, likely the largest buck ever to be taken by modern man, easily dressing out at 400 pounds with main beams the size of your upper arms, but the shot only grazed him and knocked him out, not killing him directly, Gary only using a 30-06 and all.

The shot unfortunately startled the giraffe and he took off down the mountain across the valley and over the next and so on and so on until poor Gary was in New Hampshire, where good vermonters never tread, having been site of a confrontation between a local lawyer and the unholy beelzebub years ago, the two trades being often mixed up ever since.

Well, by the time Gary was able to get off that racing critter he had lost his boots his shirt and his prize rifle, " Hits ' Em Where They Ain' t" .

It took him better part of a month to make his way home and he never did find that great monster buck that had laid stunned.

The tracks in the leaves told the tale though, five hunters had come upon the great VT buck and taken it away hog tied!

Well sir, there was a bunch of Canadians , eh? that had been hunting near there and likely they had headed for the shot to try and beg some meat from the successful VT hunter but instead had found the knocked out monster buck and took him away to far northwest canada, where they put him out to stud with the plans to charge sky high prices to Americans wanting to come to hunt his offspring each fall.

Being the world power they were that week in the 30' s Canada used it' s immense power to cover up the circus train wreck so no one knew about the giraffe that had escaped making Gary' s story sound like that of a shoeless, shirtless, gunless, mad man.

They also spread the nasty rumor that Gary had been in the state pen for the entire month for poaching and that explained his abscence.

being a known jacker on one occasion before this, it was a rumor that sticks to this day, poor Gary.

However, I found this story to be 100% true, and have the proof!

The canadians traveled through northern NY and stayed over at my grandpa' s hotel here in Bloomingdale, NY where they hid that monster buck in the woods out back.

Being fall and all, that buck did what was natural all night, there being not much else to do in the ' dacks on a cold fall night, and to this day you can still see his offspring roaming the Northern Adirondack mountains around our home.

Come and see for yourself if you don' t believe me.

* taken from " Once, but that was long ago" by Robert Weber