Kobae Three

I didn't sleep at all that night. It's been a 22 year relationship and even though he's a lot of work, very expensive, and has no shortage of attitude issues, he's my friend and good friends are hard to come by. If there is a way to save him I will. As I was working all night, unable to sleep, I imagined a beaver coming to check him and he backed up and fell in the river. A raccoon comes out of the tamarisk, he backs up and he's in the river. We show up at first light and he's gone. We look for him but no way to know where he fell in or when. It's over. These things playing in my head all night. As I'm driving over to the beach to see if he's still there before waking up Linny and Lydia I realize I was pumping water in the Condo yesterday when this all happened and it's stil pumping. I call Linny on the walkie and ask her to meet me at the boat ramp while I race over to the Condo to turn the water off. I open up the pump room and the overflow light is on. I'm getting ready to call Lydia to tell her the Condo has five hundred gallons of water in it and to start dry vac ing but I can't find where any of it went. I shut the hose off and head to the beach and meet Linny. Mosquitoes are thick but there's no place left for them to bite after last night and my cramps have cramps so it will take a long mosquitoe needle to feel any pain. There's no pictures for a bit and all the paragraphs will run together. We're focused on Kobae. During the night I tried to think of anything that might assist us so during the night I have filled up the back of one of the trucks with shovels, rakes, post hole digger and every tool we have. We take two rakes and start barefoot walking towards where we last saw Kobae 500 feet or so down the river bank from the boat ramp. He's there. I put a rake in the water in front of me and I can support myself with it. It doesn't sink in the mud. Still the water is a couple feet deep. Linny takes the other rake and we're both to him in four or five minutes. He's dug a little hole and he's still sleeping. I have some energy back and I climb up the embankment and start pushing him around so he's facing the river bank. If we can steer him 40 feet or so there is a place where he can get off the embankment and straight on to the mud beach. As soon as he sees he's in the same place where he crossed yesterday he heads right for it. I try and pull him up but I can't. He's staring at the place he came across. I know it now. it's two feet of mud and two feet of water on top. He won't make it. Kobae charges into the river. Linny says "Tom, he's made his decision there's nothing we can do. It's all up to Kobae now. It's the first time I have relaxed since he crossed. He lives or dies now and we'll know in ten seconds. It was his decision. He's very floatable but he can't swim. He runs into the river. He doesn't sink. He has so much momentum going that he runs across the top of the water and comes up on the muddy beach. He made it. He's alive. He starts slogging through really deep mud and the further he goes it starts building up in front of him like a snowplow that never turns it's blade. He's so strong. I guide him with the rake trying to keep him out of deep mud as we head for the boat ramp.

Finally he gets to shallow mud and we turn him towards the creek bed. We had no energy left to try and pick him up to put him in the back of the truck and he's slippery muddy.

He gets to the creek bed and we turn him into it. Normally we would be home in twenty minutes but Kobae is walking along grazing on grass and plants like it's a normal day and he worked up an appetite. The sun is blazing and it takes us one hour and fifteen minutes to get home. I have to fight him to get him up the hill towards the lodge and out of the creek bed. He's fighting me after all I did for him and the most stressul and strenous battle I've been through out here for many years. I get him back to the lodge and guide him to his hole quickly closing the gate behind him and head for the shower. He's alive and he's home.