The next day dawned bright, clear and almost uncannily still. I left the research station just after sunrise, and retraced my steps to where I’d last seen the Weavers.
I arrived at the clearing to find no trace of the titanothere herd that had run me off the day before – and no sign of the Weavers, either. But I’d spent most of the previous evening thinking about them and running through what I already knew about present-day procyonids. Add to that the fish that the bigger Weaver had been carrying yesterday, and the answer was “riverine habitat.”
I’d have to start looking up and down the river. Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea what I was looking for. I found it just after mid-day. The village – and you could only call it a village – was about three miles upstream from where I’d seen the Weaver family. The first thing I noticed was that I’d named them properly.
A series of neatly woven, what, huts? Houses? Anyway, a series of woven habitations were suspended in a series of huge cottonwood trees overhanging the river. Between the trees were suspended walkways, woven of what looked like strips of tree bark. As I watched through binoculars from a half-mile away, a Weaver emerged from one of the woven huts, ambled across a walkway from one tree to the next, and disappeared into a larger hut in the second tree.
Fascinating.
Leaving the Hummer where it sat, I shouldered the big Remington and a daypack containing a water bottle and a couple sandwiches. The valley walls here were not so steep as farther down the river, and a few minute’s pleasant walk in the sunshine brought me to within a hundred yards of the village. It was pleasantly cool under the cottonwoods. Five minutes, ten maybe, and I rounded a slight bend on the riverbank to find four Weavers seated on their tails in a semi-circle, facing me.
What’s this, a prayer meeting? I remember thinking. The four little creatures linked forepaws and stared at me. The one on the right-hand side – from my perspective – let out a single, twittering note.
A wave of abject terror slammed into me. Ice-cold sweat poured from my entire body; I was seized with an almost irresistible urge to flee for my life. I fought the overwhelming fear down somehow, and took a step towards the Weavers.
Panic, abject, raging horror slammed into me with an almost physical force. Every cell in my body screamed run, run, RUN!
But a tiny rational portion of my mind held on. I stood my ground, and gradually, the feeling of terror slipped away. My heart rate returned to normal, and I was left feeling like I badly needed a shower, but otherwise, unharmed.
The Weavers let go each other’s paws and stared at me. I stared back. A bird cheeped somewhere in the brush behind me. I had the oddest feeling of curiosity.
And then they calmly turned and filed away into the brush. The largest of them, bringing up the rear, turned just before entering the bushes and looked back; it gave the oddest sort of flip of the head, almost as though he was indicating their direction. Then he followed the others. I followed, too.
Of course, it was a lot harder for me to crash through the brush than it was for the Weavers to slip through their trails at ground level. I eventually found my way through, emerging at last on a wide, open, bare stretch of riverbank under the Weaver village.
The village – for you really couldn’t call it anything else – was a marvel of engineering. The houses seemed to be woven of reeds from the river, using green branches as a framework. It took me a few minutes examination through my binoculars, but I finally realized that the hanging walkways were woven of the inner bark of trees – and around me I could see the remains of several smaller trees that had been stripped for their bark. Strings of dried strips of fish hung from cords between two of the largest trees. The Weavers, on top of all their other innovations, were preserving and storing food.
Things were getting more interesting by the moment, but what there was a quandary. The Weavers were obviously aware of my presence, but they seemed – for the moment – to be carrying out their activities normally. A few of them scurried across the walkways, several more lounged in the morning sunshine, and as I watched three of them descended a tree, strapped woven baskets to their backs, and wandered off down the riverbank.
I watched, photographed and took video, and jotted down copious notes, all through the afternoon. Towards evening I went back to the Hummer, rolled out my sleeping bag in the back, and tried to sleep. It wasn’t easy. The implications of everything I’d seen and recorded were bouncing around in my head like marbles. The sky was growing light in the east when I finally managed to doze for a little while.
Wham!
I started awake. Something was shaking the Hummer like a toy. Grabbing the rifle, I stole a look out the window.
A truck-sized, long-jawed pig-like creature was calmly scratching himself on the side of the Hummer. The name snapped to mind – this was an entelodont, an omnivorous relative of true pigs. If the fossil-hunter’s guesses were accurate, it would be a vicious, aggressive beast; I’d have to wait for it to leave.
It didn’t take long. After a nice comfortable scratch that left a long dent in the Kevlar-armored truck, the entelodont wandered off down the valley towards the Weaver village.
I jumped out of the truck to follow, carrying my big rifle at port arms and maintaining a respectful distance from the entelodont.
Two hundred yards or so ahead of me, the giant hog entered the brush that formed a border of sorts along the top of the steep riverbank. I hurried to catch up; if the killer pig caught the Weavers unaware, it may very well slaughter one or more of them. I should have remembered the day before well enough to realize I didn’t have anything to worry about.
No more than thirty seconds passed after the entelodont crashed into the brush before it crashed out again, bellowing in terror. I was only a few feet away from the bank myself, and I aimed my rifle quickly, but the giant hog ignored me, racing past me only a few feet away and disappearing over the ridge behind the clearing where I’d left the Hummer.
Empathy was the word I’d been unconsciously looking for since yesterday. The Weavers had evolved the ultimate defense against predators; the ability to project an emotion, in this case abject, screaming terror, directly into another creature’s brain.
There could be no better defense than the ability to give a predator a real white-knuckled case of the heebie-jeebies at will.
I admit now that I was a little concerned that they’d hit me with it again when I showed up. I suppose I should have known better; these animals were, after all, intelligent.
But I didn’t really know how intelligent. Not at that point, anyway.
A slippery patch of damp sand at the base of the steep bank deposited me on my hind end on the flat sand of the river bottom, right in the middle of a group of three Weavers. Seated in a semi-circle, the three stared at me as I stood up and brushed the damp sand from my pants. The smallest of the three had what looked like a twinkle of – what, amusement? Yes, amusement in her eyes.
Fascinating.
I’d navigated pretty well. The Weaver village stretched out through the trees above me, and the air was filled with rustlings, faint twittering, and the patter of feet on the woven walkways. Just ahead of me, the river flowed sluggishly.
The largest Weaver of the three in front of me looked a bit familiar; I recognized a bare spot on the tip of is left ear, a scar from some past injury. I remembered him – he was one of the first Weavers I’d seen, that day after the rainstorm.
Tip – that’s how I thought of him from that moment on – Tip sat there looking at me for a moment. He made a twittering sound, motioned to the other two; they disappeared into the brush above the riverbank. Tip didn’t look like he planned on going anywhere, so I leaned my rifle against the nearest tree and sat down across from him. All around us, the patter and twitter of the Weaver village went on as though there was no huge, strange, alien intruder sitting down with one of their own.
Whelp, that was certainly an interesting development.
I sure am enjoying this. So many interesting ways the story could go.
#metoo
Was not expecting them to have psychic defenses.
#measwellandhowdoesonereallyusehashtags?
This is progressing nicely and I like the voice, semi-playfully descriptive yet on-point. It’s a fun adventure into a familiar-but-not place. So far.
Editor Ev wants to point out: “…a bare spot on the 𝐭𝐢𝐩 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐞𝐚𝐫,..” should be (presumably) “his.” Oh, ya betchy’all’s ass I’ll misgender a Weaver. I ain’t shook. *peers over rock*
I am very much enjoying this storyline
Cheer up sandy jeans! Oh what can this mean… for a raccoon-like weaver sitting down by the stream?
fucking earworm
“Hey hey, we’re the Weavers, people say we’re woven around?
The parasites are freaking out at the cancellation of USAID. Meanwhile the DOGE team is finding out disturbing facts. Like the $40 million sent to the Wuhan lab for a project with a 2019 deliverable.
https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1886388995334017150
I wonder how it’ll go when people ‘discover’ they’d been played. Hard. By (nearly) everyone. I don’t know who or how it’ll be delivered, but I anticipate what we’ve already seen: Circle the wagons, pucker-clench their religious asses to avoid every bearing responsibility.
People will continue to steadfastly refuse to believe truths revealed. I don’t anticipate happy campers. I *do* expect awkward family pauses.
Psychic raccoons. Maybe they hide amongst us today?
If they figure out how to project the equivalent of a “Somebody Else’s Problem” field they just might…
Meanwhile the DOGE team is finding out disturbing facts.
This reminds me of the tale of the loyal steadfast diligent employee who never takes a vacation and works long hours without complaint and never asks for help. And then one day… somebody else finally gets a look at what he’s been up to all this time.
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2025/02/03/mexico-sending-troops-to-secure-border-avoiding-trump-tariffs/
That was quick.
TrUmP CaVeD!!!
https://x.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1886444801626636708
🙄
How many millions of idiots will believe that?
How many millions of idiots will believe that?
Fewer than used to. We can’t expect them to stop lying, but we can keep mocking the lies on X.
That post is screaming for some tasty community notes.
I don’t love the tariffs, but it’s a helluva bargaining chip. Negotiations took place. Swift response. It ‘worked.’ Funny, that. No idea if it’ll ‘hold’ or whatever, and I’d prefer to know more, but it seems awfully like actual statesmanship from the dominant power. And as y’all pointed out, it *does* test the waters for China. Stew the pot and see what pops out.
I’m *remarkably* impressed with Trump 2.0’s first two weeks. Washington’s power is being stripped, and it takes Trump to do it? Ha! That’s gotta burn. All the Right People are angry! 😎
“I don’t love the tariffs” You (well, really, Mexico, Canada, China, etc) aren’t supposed to. I still find it remarkable that so many people don’t realize they are a pure bargaining chip. Trump, believe it or not, isn’t stupid. He knows you can’t raise much money with these things, but he also knows they can inflict a lot of pain (mostly, one hopes, on other countries). I would be willing to bet that within a year, we are looking at zero tariffs that matter, and a number of deals made with various countries.
This is what Trump does. Politicking with entitled, degenerate politicians isn’t, which is what he tried his first term. This term is basically a hostile takeover, domestically, and a bare knuckled business negotiation internationally.
I do like that it’s a one-month pause, to see if anything serious happens.
I think tariffs aren’t the best idea and if allowed to go on for a long time will blow up in our faces, but I’m absolutely all for it being used as a negotiating tool when it needs to be done.
(Jinx! Ya owe me a coke! and well said and thought. You and I, two horses in harness.)
Psychic raccoons demand ear scretches!
I’m tired.
That meeting was exhausting.
I should take up cat herding – it’d be easier.
I understand. On both the IT and business side, it is constant corralling. Honestly I’d love to work with someone Doge just so I could be with people who have viable ideas other than just me all the time.
“I don’t see how you two can be friends; you’re too temperamentally misinclined. He’s so queer, and you’re so gay.”
“You got your peanutbutter on my chocolate”:viceversa, except it’s all dicks and buttholes etc
I hope i ruined reese’s cups for anybody who still found them edible.
Two boys, one peanut butter cup?
you overestimate yourself.
i’d have no selfestimatation otherwise
I eat the outer rim first, then shear off the chocolate top and bottom. Then I have a beautiful ball of peanut butter to nibble on.
Mom’s of the opinion, which I share, that no one eats ’em the same way. Mine, is obviously, Toteski McGotski, the best. (A fight’s a brewin’.)
This must be posted.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sjrdanK4LSY
This must be posited:
My balls are not chocolate, though they may be slightly salty. From time to time
Some call it ‘land reform’.
I just call it KILL THOSE RACIST WHITEYS, with no sense of irony or selfawareness whatsoever.
“An idiot’s response to Thomas Aquinas”
Not a bad read, but nowhere near as entertaining as “Jack Handy VS Jesus”
“If you drop your keys into a river of molten lava, just let em go, man. Unless you can walk on water, cause, uh, i dunno, that doesn’t really help does it. Does Jesus even need keys?”
Of course not — “Knock and the door shall open”.
Which is absolutely true If you knock hard enough, any door will open eventually.
I know this is a dead thread, but if the Weavers can scare the hell out of him (IMO obviously using psychic powers) they’ll have no trouble running off a pig incapable of rational thought.