Baboon Pirates

Scribbles and Scrawls from an unrepentant swashbuckling primate.

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Location: Texas, United States

Thursday, August 24, 2006

More Cheesy Camping Stories

Ain't Nothing Better Than Nacho-Flavored Wildlife!

Some of the same scurrilous campers from this story went on another camping trip. Again, there was lots of alcohol involved...

Y'know, pretty much anytime I mention the word 'camping' on this blog, you can safely assume alcohol will play a factor in the tale. Even when I preface 'camping' with 'Boy Scouts', there still remains a good chance some fermented and/or distilled liquids were nearby. Yeah, I did OK with the "physically strong" and "mentally awake" parts of the Scout Oath, it's that pesky "morally straight" part that gave me problems...

I digress. Back to the cheesy camping story!

Just as a general rule, you should never go shopping for camping food when you've got the marijohoonie-induced munchies. The #10 can of Rico's nacho cheese (that's 6 lbs of cheese sauce, btw) and the 5 lb. bag of tortilla chips looked great on the Sam's Club flatbed cart alongside the 3 cases of Heineken beer and the 40 lb bag of charcoal, but proved to be a bit of a puzzler once we got out into the woods.

After consuming the better part of two cases of Heineken, the sun was setting and hunger pangs were coming on. Somehow we managed to get the lid off the can o' nacho cheese, only to find out we were short on utensils. No spoons or spatulas were to be found. OK, no prob. We poured a good portion of the goopy cheese into a pot, warmed it over the flames until it thinned out enough to be eaten, and then in the process of gorging ourselves managed to smear cheesy chip fragments all over our bodies and the campsite.

When we finally passed out, bloated on beer & nachos, not a one of us had remembered to secure the remainder of the cheese, maybe a 1/3 of the can remained. It was still sitting atop the concrete picnic table over by the fire.

When a large clanging crash awoke us in the wee hours of the morning, I remember peeking out the canvas sides of the pop-up camper and seeing a commotion outside. It looked like the nacho cheese can was trying to scuttle off into the underbrush.

When clothes were pulled on and flashlights found, the can had returned to the concrete slab under the table, and was banging along the edge. You could easily see a furry rump and two hind feet sticking out the end of the can, with a striped tail whipping back & forth as the critter struggled to free itself.

I guess all the cheese on the interior of the can made it hard for Mr. Raccoon to extract himself, but he finally managed. If we hadn't seen the back end, though, you wouldn't have been able to tell what it was. That li'l guy was just *covered* in nacho cheese sauce!

Naturally, we weren't too loaded to forget to yell at the coon the cliched line pefect for times like that... (all together now!)

"Hey! That's Nacho Cheese!!!"