The Great White Hunter?

The Great White Hunter lies in wait. Ensconced inside his camouflage pop-up blind, wearing camouflage from head to toe, he attempts to blend in with his environment.

He hears his prey stealthily approaching. He prepares to take it down. It enters within range.

Suddenly the area bursts into light!

The Great White Hunter yells, "Turn out those lights! I'm hunting here!" And then he begins to laugh maniacally like the devil himself.

Here's what really happened ...

The Great White Hunter's wife comes home from work one day. Everything in the house is dark.

She turns on the kitchen light first and makes her way to the bedroom where she plans on changing from work clothes to "Ahhh-I'm-home-for-the-night-clothes."

When she turns on the lights in the bedroom, a voice booms out at her, "Turn out those lights! I'm hunting here!" and someone laughs like a crazy hyena!

She screams in fright, "Holy Crap!"

After she recovers from an epic heart attack, she takes in the incredible sight of a camouflage pop-up blind in the middle of her bedroom.

Holding a compound bow, a man, dressed totally in camouflage with his face completely masked, laughing like a psycho, emerges and she thinks to herself, "Today is the day I die."

She envisions her poor, unsuspecting husband coming home and finding her eviscerated, dead body lying in a bloody pool where she had been gutted like a deer.

Too stunned to even turn and run, she stares transfixed as he approaches. He reaches up as to remove his mask. Well, at least she would see the face of death.

Standing in front of her, is her husband of 43 years.

Her worst nightmare has come to life.

He finally lost all his marbles.

She takes in the almost 6-foot by 6-foot camouflage blind in the middle of her bedroom, his attire, his weapon and "What in God's name are you doing?" she asks.

It turns out that he decided this was the year he was going to get a buck, come heck or high water. After a lifetime of hunting, he bought his first compound bow so he could hunt in the early season.

He bought his first tree stand and camo ground blind. He was taking this deer season very seriously.

I gotta tell you, that pop up ground blind is pretty impressive. All he has to do is push on a couple of key spots and the whole thing folds up slick as snot. He stores it in a bag with a shoulder strap for an easy carry into the woods and out.

Now the compound bow ... that's a horse of different color. This thing is so hard to load an arrow. Harry's has a 175-pound pull. (Yeah. I know. It meant nothing to me either. I had to ask.)

The effort needed to cock these bows exceeds what human power can accomplish by simply pulling on the string.

So some crossbow designs incorporate cocking devices, such as levers and cranks, which aid the shooter in drawing the bow. Harry's has a pulley rope to cock it, cutting the pulling weight to half.

I have this vision of Geronimo up there in the Happy Hunting Grounds in the Sky, laughing his head off at how modern man has made something so simple as a bow and arrow complicated.

My guy can do anything. He is my Superman!

He was getting my car ready for inspection. He was replacing the brake pads in the front and the brake shoes on the back.

He came into the house and told me he needed help. (Well, after he set up a whole campsite in our bedroom, I KNOW he needs help.)

Thinking he just wanted me to sit in the car and put my foot on the brake pedal to "bleed the brakes," (Yeah. Again. No clue. I just do what he tells me to), I went to put on my coat.

"You might not want to wear something good. Don't you have something you won't care if you get dirty?" he asks.

"How dirty are we talking here and just what the heck do you need help with?" I began envisioning the two of us leaning into the belly of the car, grease up to our elbows.

It turns out all I had to do was hold this thingamajiggy with one hand and a light in the other so he could put a shoe on the back brake. I don't know why it's called a shoe. It doesn't look like a shoe and what it covered didn't look like a foot either. I'm also pretty sure it's a prerequisite that all mechanics have an extensive swearing vocabulary, if Harry is any indication.

As I sat on my upside down bucket watching Harry put all the pieces back together again, I couldn't help but be amazed at just this one aspect of a working automobile and the minds that came up with this incredible machine.

Who designed something with so many working parts with such intricate details to get something to move by just turning a key?

Whenever I see an airplane in the sky, I wonder how in the world something so large, so heavy can stay up in the air?

Finally he excused me from further mechanical duties and I rushed up to the house to wash my hands. Yes, I actually got dirty and greasy. Plain soap and water didn't do it.

"Oh no," I thought. "Now I'll look like a grease monkey when I go to church tomorrow."

Harry came to the rescue with his industrial size container of Permatex Fast Orange Fine Pumice Lotion Hand Cleaner. Again. Another great invention!

What great minds there are to imagine, create and develop the things that make our life easier. Cleansers. The automobile. Compound bows. Pop up tents.

And yet, the Great White Hunter is still deerless.

Always the eternal optimist, he says, "There's still muzzleloader season."

Run Bambi, Run!!!