Apocalypsis 01 - Kahayatle

out of the water, into the roots of the tree that had sheltered her babies.
    “Holy crap.   Did you just see that?” said Peter in hushed tones.   Buster continued to struggle and whine in his arms, but Peter kept a hold on him.
    “Yes.   And I never ever want to see it again.”
    “Paddles, guyss, paddles.   Bodo iss getting tiredt.”
    “Oh, yeah … sorry,” I mumbled, scrambling to my spot at the back of the boat and picking up my paddle on the way.   I used the end of it to shove Peter’s boat away from me.
    “Peter, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer it if you could avoid running into gator nests for the rest of this trip.”
    “Shut up,” he said, putting Buster back down and stroking his oar into the water, moving to lead our convoy again.   “It wasn’t me.   It was the paddle.”
    ***
    I decided that giving Peter a hard time about his paddling was a bad idea.   My lack of canoeing skills was a slow form of torture for all of us.
    “Here I go again,” sighed Peter.   “Pushed into the bank because someone can’t seem to stop dragging my ass end over into the Netherlands.   Good thing there’s no gator nest on this one.”
    I laughed.   “The Netherlands?”
    “It’s the best I could come up with,” he said, slapping the water with his paddle.   “Can we stop for a while, please.   I’m too tired to go any farther.   I give up.”   He rested the paddle across his thighs, looking back at us.
    “I think dat’s a good idea,” said Bodo from behind me.  
    “Okay, I’m outvoted.   First good pull-over spot you see, park your canoe, Peter.   We’ll figure out the rest.”
    Peter paddled with renewed energy, and five minutes later pointed out his choice.   “There!   That’s where I’m aiming.”
    We were in a darker part of the cypress bog now, trees completely covering the space above our heads, leaving a canopy that started about fifteen feet up.   Peter had taken a fork in the river to the left about a mile back.   I would have gone right, following the small and unobtrusive signs the canoe rental people had attached to nearby trees, but I was letting him lead the way.  
    The spot Peter was planning to have our picnic was spooky - definitely not the spot I would have chosen - but I knew he was at his wit’s end, so kept my mouth shut about it.
    His canoe ran into a system of tangled roots that belonged to a huge tree with branches hanging over the water to reach the other side.   Peter scrambled not very gracefully out of his boat and balanced on a long narrow root, his sneakers bending in half over it, making him look like a giant scraggly bird gripping the thing with its talons.   He was doing what he could to hold the canoe in place, so we could join him.   “Ready for you, guys,” he said, grunting a little with the effort of holding his canoe.
    Buster was the first to follow his orders.   He jumped out easily, sniffing around ambitiously.
    I decided to forget trying to paddle into any sort of organized parking spot next to him since my capabilities were so limited.   I eyed the water, looking all around me for clues that a gator was waiting to eat me, slapping at the mosquitos that had come out in the shade to suck my tired blood.
    Deciding that there were no hungry-looking gators in evidence, I got out of the boat and into the water, grumbling to myself the whole way.   “Stupid swamp … Stupid mosquitoes … Stupid gators.”
    “Stupid canoes!” added Bodo.
    I looked up at him from the water and smiled, knowing that at least for me, the old adage is true - misery does love company.
    Peter held his hand out and helped me schlep out of the water.   I hated the squishy feeling in my shoes, but tried to ignore it.   We were going to be living in a swamp; chances are, squishy shoes were going to be a regular part of my life.   Buster came up and started licking them.
    I shooed him away so I could use the chain and then the rope to secure the boats to our landing site without squashing him.  
    Bodo was the last to arrive, getting out in the water like I had to come join us.   “Well,” he said, a huge grin on his face, “dat was exciting, wasn’t it?”
    Peter looked at him, just shaking his head.   “Are all Germans as crazy as you, Bodo?”
    “Maybe.   If you think being happy about life is crazy, den yes.”
    “Bodo, how is it that you were wandering around the highway all by yourself that day that we saw you?”   It was a