The Crazy Lady Stays Alive

In the middle of the week, in the middle of the day, I was in such need of endorphins, I went out for a run.

And it was indeed beauteous.

Photo by L McWilliams

The crisp crunch of rice crispy treat-like leaves in day-glow colors, the bright sun, the invigorating air, it was all wonderful, just what I needed.

I forgot about the hunters.

About half-way through my run, mile 2.5, I came upon this sign:

Since it is now officially hunting season, a run through these woods is fraught. Fraught with freedom, fraught with natural beauty, true that. It's also fraught with hunting folk that may or may not notice I am a human and thus, non-huntable according to law.

This sign says people should wear hunter's orange as a precaution. 

I look down at myself.  I am wearing not one scintilla of orange. I am wearing grey, black and white.

Like a white-tailed deer.

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I decide:

1. I will run, wee, wee, wee, all the way back to my car.

2. I will sing while running because deer do not sing.

I take off, singing loudly enough, I reason, to alert people. Possibly I am alerting them to a crazy lady singing by herself in the woods, but no matter. The crazy lady stays alive.

I imagine hunters whispering in the woods:

Shhhh....Henry, I hear something.

Oscar, I hear it too.

Wait...it sounds familiar. I can't place it.

Me, too. I know this call. Is it a yellow-bellied warbler?

I don't know. Does a yellow-bellied warbler sound like ABBA?

Hmmmmmm....you are right, that's no warbler. That's "Dancing Queen."

Here is the new hunter's orange shirt I will now wear when I feel the need to take a gamble and run in the woods, which is never:

That was my fastest 2.5 mile run ever, a personal best of sorts.

UPDATE:
Just a few weeks later I found this article from the dailyGrafton how a recent jogger on the same trail was not so lucky and got injured from buckshot.

Hunter's orange is the new black, apparently.