MrShineyhead's Travels:
Deaf Dog in the Park | State Fair | MrWildWildWest | Gone Fishin' | The Pirate | Me Here!

Tales in The Dark:
The Mountain Lion | Ice Lake | Civil War | Lorelei | The Goblins

With a special ASL translation of:
The Star-Spangled Banner

The Mountain Lion

Once upon a time, a man wandered alone on a mountain amongst the trees.  As he walked, he gathered kindling and made his way to a small house where he began to build a fire. After building a tower of kindling, he was soon warming his hands next to the roaring fire. 

The man thought about his ailing wife, who lay sick in bed nearby.  He approached her side and asked, “Are you okay my dear?”

“No,” she replied, “I am so sick.”

“You rest,” he said, and returned to the fire.  Later, he approached his wife and asked again, “Are you feeling alright?” Again, she responded that she felt ill.

As night fell, the man approached his wife’s bedside again and tried to rouse her. Her eyes stared blankly into space as he tried in vain to wake his wife. He felt for a pulse but there was none to be found. Realizing his wife had died; the man gently closed her eyes and covered her face with the blanket.

The man took his seat in front of the fire, gazing into it and contemplating his grief as his wife’s body lay nearby. As the fire crackled, sparks popped and flew into the air, the man got into bed and nestled into the covers.

Meanwhile, the sparks from the fire continued to fly and whirl in the air. From his bed, the man glanced at the covered form of his wife nearby. In the darkened room, the man couldn’t see anything. The man began to cry, softly at first, and then finally sobbing with grief and pain.

As the man lay silently in his bed, the door to the house suddenly slammed open blowing leaves and debris into the house!  The man recoiled, wondering what could have caused such a ruckus. 

As he peered through the darkness, the house shook and the man could hear a guttural roar all around him. As he lay in bed, he tossed and turned trying to avoid the plates, cups, and other household items that flew past his head and crashed into broken shards around him.  The man ducked and tried to hide as a lamp hit him across his face leaving him bleeding from the head.

The sun began to rise, and as the man was able to see, he surveyed the damage to himself and his home. His head and hands were bloody. Chairs and tables were upended in the kitchen and broken glass littered the floor. The door to the house stood open. 

The man noticed bloody paw prints and the droppings of what looked like a mountain lion all over the room. He wasn’t sure what animal has been responsible for making the tracks and such a mess.

As the man surveyed the damage he began to shake in horror as he came upon the body of his dead wife.  The blanket covering her body had come off and exposed her face which lay there with its eyes wide open. Her face and neck were covered in blood, and even more horrifying was what he found in his dead wife’s mouth:  the detached EAR of the mountain lion.

Desperately, the man ran to his wife, removed the ear, and tried to revive her. He saw that the lion had already bitten his wife in the throat and she was bleeding heavily. Alas, it was not to be, his wife was truly gone.

In horror, the man realized that his wife hadn’t truly been dead the night before, and this realization knocked him to his knees where he screamed out to the sky, “Noooo!!!”

But it was too late.

Translation done by: Tammera J. Richards, BS, CI & CT; SC:L; NAD IV