A Speckled Fawn

Incoming codes here at I.C. News have gone flat, which means the transmission has gone quiet for some reason; but that reason is not because the space war action we have been tracking has been canceled; were that the case there would be a code for that.
 
Likely there has been a big shift in the equation, and the attack pattern called "High-Low Split" has been paused.  This could be because America is about to surrender its alleged right to enslave and torture me, or a target has shifted, or something major has happened that is being censored out of the news.
 
In the mean time I have been asked to tell you a Little Miracle story called "A Speckled Fawn".  It is a backpacking story, and I am always happy to write about backpacking.
 
There was a time when I owned a big white Chevy van, and one year I took this van to a trail head parking lot I was unfamiliar with, intending to do one of my month-long hikes.
 
I parked in the lot, removed the distributor cable to reduce the chance of theft, put the cable in my pack and put my pack on my back, locked the van and started hiking along the trail.
 
My first night was spent in a soft, sweet meadow not far up the trail, and while I was walking around exploring the area and looking for a good place to bed down, one of my  Angel pals said to me, "Virgil, in four days you are going to be in serious danger, and we want you to be like a speckled fawn".
 
You might guess what that meant, I was to do what a fawn would do in time of danger, lie still and let my protective coloring do its job.
 
So I camped in a good defensive position, one not easily approached in the dark and allowing me a good view of the trail during the day.
 
The next day as I began to head up the trail toward the danger I expected awaited me three days away; but my Angel said, "No, stay here, the danger will be at your car".
 
So I did what I would not normally do and hung around the meadow for the next two days instead of getting into the process of building up strength by hiking, which was one of the main purposes for my going into the wilderness for a month.
 
Then the message was repeated, "Virgil, in three days you are going to be in serious danger, and we want you to be like a speckled fawn.
 
The next day the warning was repeated...in two days...speckled fawn.
 
Around noon on the third day the Angel said, "Now go back to your van".
 
When I got to the trail head parking lot nothing seemed wrong.  There were at least a dozen cars there in addition to mine, and while I was looking around carefully I was not very tentative about what I might find because I had been told the danger would take place on the fourth day, the next day.
 
I unlocked and slid open the side door of my van and was not altogether surprised to see my van had been ransacked and my property thrown into disarray.  I climbed in and checked it out and found that nothing was missing, including a number of items of some value.
 
I went around to the back and found that the padlock I used to lock the rear doors had been sawn through and then returned to position so the damage to it would not be easily noticed.
 
So I sat down in the cool of my van, smoked a joint and thought about this.  I remembered seeing a teenager on a small motorcycle eyeing me a little too intently when I arrived; and I, putting two and two and two together; concluded he had broken in but taken nothing because he was on his motorcycle, and that he planned to come back later with another vehicle to haul my property away.
 
I figured "later" would be the early hours of the next day, danger day.  What I mean is I assumed he would return after midnight that night.
 
Soldiers among my readers will know I suddenly found myself in an ideal ambush situation.  I had a small rifle and Old Betsy, my six-shooter, and right behind my van was a steep hillside which had been cut out when the parking lot was made, and atop that steep place was a log, behind which I could lie in wait.
 
But, and here is the big but that established a totally different course for that hour of danger, my Angel pal had said,  "...we want you to be like a speckled fawn".
 
I hadn't been advised to be like a soldier waiting in ambush, or a rabbit getting out of there while the getting was good, no, I was asked to take a position of helplessness and let my protective coloring do its job.
 
So I took my distributor cable out of my pack and reconnected it, and I drove my van out into the middle of the parking lot so it would be clear to the returning thief that I was likely in it; and I pulled the blinds so they covered all my windows and formed a curtain behind the driver-passenger seats; then I got myself naked and got into my sleeping bag, Old Betsy of course at the ready.
 
Sleeping the sleep of the innocent as I do, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a spotlight shining on my windshield, the view into my van being blocked by the curtain.
 
As I got out of my sleeping bag fully aware there was trouble behind that spotlight.  I went to grab Old Betsy (one of the odd things about me being I really like gunplay) when I noticed that the shadows cast on me by the light passing through the curtain made black speckles on the white of my naked assed body, not unlike the speckles on a fawn.
 
The vehicle, a pickup, pulled right up next to my car, its driver's door next to my driver's door.
 
I put my head through the curtain and I saw three guys in the bed of the pickup holding rifles; so the odds of the situation started going through my mind, four guys with rifles and me with Old Betsy and her six rounds, and me naked, and bullets coming in through the side of the van...be like a speckled fawn; I agreed.
 
So I went back and sat down on my sleeping bag while the four armed boys walked around my van talking among themselves, deciding what to do now that the game had gone from burglary to robbery; and I was steaming, I was steaming, my adrenaline was pumping and I was wanting that gunfight so bad...be like a speckled fawn.
 
Then a shadow of a man and a rifle barrel appeared on the curtain behind the driver's seat of my van, and it looked like the bastard was coming in, so I sat there and I cocked Old Betsy back, deciding if he came in I would kill him right there and then, speckled fawn or no speckled fawn.
 
But the shadow was an optical illusion, he was opening his own driver's side door and getting into his own car, and the three boys were piling into the back of the pickup, and then they drove away doing the cowardly American torture-cough as they did so.
 
Good advice, my Angels always give me good advice, even though it sometimes runs against my grain to follow it.
 
What might have happened had I not followed that advice?  Even if I had come out on top in a gunfight with four teenage boys, the subsequent trial being in their rural mountain community, four nice boys from the local high school shot up by the infamous Telepath everyone liked to mess with, I would have gone to prison, which is where America had wanted me all along.
 
I suggest my Angel gave me that warning and that advise at that time for three reasons.  First, she did not want my possessions stolen; and second, she wanted to strengthen our working relationship, and third, she wanted to give me the chance to fight back and the chance to overcome the temptation to fight back.
 
By that time America had been torturing me for perhaps 15 years; so the temptation to punish those thieves caught in the act was very, very strong, but "turning the other cheek" has always been a good defensive strategy for me considering the Americans outnumber me about 300 million to one. 
 
Now, let's turn our attention to you, Dear Reader.  My Angel asked me to tell you this particular story today for a particular reason; and it seems to me that is because my Angel is suggesting that you, too, be like a speckled fawn.
 
Said another way, my Angels and I can handle this job just fine.