be afraid, be moderately afraid

You are searching. The sun is painting another coat of burn on your tilted neck. Sweat drips--one drop, two drops, three drops--from your underarms and creeps down your side like the spider you're just absolutely sure it is; and you squeal--not much, no one has heard, but still, for a moment there you thought you were a goner.

The tall grasses reach your thighs, tickle your bare, bramble-pricked legs, and manage to sway despite the absence of breeze. For that, you are jealous. What you would give for the slightest, ghost-finger of wind, right now. Among other things, you'd forfeit the ball you are searching for and drop one of your myriad others. Drop it somewhere cushy, some tuft of turf amenable to a solid, if amateur, shot. Maybe reach the green in regulation for the first time all day. But no, it's hot and you're in it now and you're lazy and it's easier to just keep trudging the bramble and marsh reeds, plucking other hapless hackers' Top-Flites from the caked-mud earth.

And then you hear it . . . clonklareee, clonklaree . . . the demoniac screech of the red-winged blackbird. He rises from the foliage like some demented ninja and hovers, flapping, chittering, beak agape--it's your warning to scram or suffer the perils, the seething, hateful perils of . . .

oh wait, he flew away. Seems he was all clonklaree and no bite. It was a good effort, you suppose. For a moment there, you thought you were a goner again. You hackled like a frightened kitten and you bowels clinched, but no one heard, no one saw. Go drop a ball.