Inktober 2: #Spiders
In which a swamp monster alarms the locals.
When my dad was a boy in Dodge County, Georgia, people got to talking about strange noises that had started emanating from the depths of Gum Swamp late at night. Some people described the sounds as a deep moaning. Others said, no, it was more of a roaring. Could it have been the wind? No, the noises came on still nights and windy nights alike. Maybe a bobcat? A panther? Alligators? No, folks around there were pretty familiar with the sounds of the swamp animals, and this wasn’t like anything anybody had ever heard. Was it a ghost? A swamp monster? Those suggestions seemed as likely as any other. There was much speculation around firesides and across checkerboards throughout Dodge and Telfair Counties.
As it turned out, however, the noises came from a roaring machine constructed by one of the locals. He stretched a cowhide across one end of a nail keg, poked a hole in the cowhide, and ran a rosined string through the hole. As he ran the string back and forth through the hole, it made a moan that was amplified in the resonating chamber of the nail keg. At night he carried his roaring machine out into the swamp and roared away, among the snakes and #spiders.
It was just a prank (though an elaborate one). I like to think how much trouble that old boy put himself through for the mere pleasure of alarming his neighbors and giving them something to talk about. The man was an artist. #inktober202
