They made me an only child & I had to share their attention with no one else. They liked to travel & introduce me to different cultures (and food) and they raised me in a cabin.
Dad & MaryAnne bought the cabin at Betula lake in the beautiful Whiteshell when I was about two or three. Weekends & summers were spent there religiously.
The cabin is by no means luxurious. As of right now it is a one bedroom built on stacks & with an outhouse that you freeze your ass running to in the winter. There is a garage, deck & playhouse turned storage shed. As of about ten years ago there is also a pathway leading up to a dock & a boat launch.
I was about ten or eleven years old when me family hosted my aunt's ex-husband (we're an odd bunch) along with his new girlfriend & their family. Since my dad's passed away, I don't keep in touch much with that side of the family so for the most part, their names escape me. Let's call them ex-uncle Brian, BG (for Brian's girlfriend) & the un-named little girl (BG's child from another relationship, about the same age as me).
The weekend started out like any relaxing summer weekend.
Since the cabin is small, we'd have to help the guests set up tents or a camper. We'd all unpack any groceries they'd brought & get a fire going to cook food (for those of you that are Bar-B-Que-ers, you haven't tried anything until you've eaten fresh food cooked on a grill over a fire pit full of birch & pine. You can put a shoe on that fire with a little BBQ sauce & it'll taste good.)
Sometime that weekend we brought the guests over to the dock to fish & swim.
There was a great beach at the lake by the way, no rocks & less weeds, but lots of shallow-water leeches waiting to suction on to your toes & climb up your legs to your bikini bottoms (don't you dare assume I'm kidding, I've seen it happen). So the dock worked well as it was private & deep.
Un-named little girl really liked the water. I, being the gracious host that I am, swam around with her (although I was clearly better at it given my experience) & let her play with all of my water toys. You think she'd be grateful for all of this but then the little tramp lets go of my noodle & lets it float away.
By the time I catch on to what's going on, my beloved noodle had floated past our dock area & drifted 8 meters away in to the undeveloped, swampy area filled with rocks, weeds & god knows what else. I would have to retrieve it or MaryAnne would be mad.
I considered getting out of the water & walking along the shore to go pick-it up, but as I mentioned this was deep water so I would not be walking along a sandy beach but along an undeveloped rocky ledge filled with trees, grass & spiders.
I decided to risk it & just swim through the unknown. It would take me all of two minutes & what's the worse that could happen? I touch a few weeds & get grossed out? (If this were the case this would be an extremely short story).
I swim out, touch a few weeds (ewwww gross) & grab the noodle. Ha! Halfway there.
I am returning through the swamp/marsh & am about halfway back when it happens.
Something grabs me.
When I say 'grab' in this sense, I don't mean that it trapped me & pulled me, but I certainly don't know if the word 'bite' or 'nip' is sufficient. Better yet, something 'chomped me'.
I am an eleven year old girl & evidently a hero as I spent less time thinking
"WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON HERE WHAT JUST TOOK A CHUNK OUT OF ME?!"
& more time saying
"SOMETHING IS IN THE WATER, EVERYBODY GET OUT OF THE WATER!!!"
Which MaryAnne (my mother) waved off with a
"Calm down, nothings in there".
At that point I should have been thinking
"lady I'm going to call CFS on your ass for immediately disregarding me"
but instead though
"OK then psychopath, let me get out of the water, show you my torn limb & then while you apologize profusely for not believing me, let the lake monster get the un-named little girl".
I immediately bean to pull myself out of the water & now that (at least I) was safe, let my brain begin to churn as to what my mutilated limb would look like & what could have chomped me.
I had no idea what could be in those water. First I thought it might have been a beaver... maybe a massive river-monster style jackfish or pickerel. I knew I was in pain, but because my adrenaline was so high, I didn't know how much. Maybe I had over-exaggerated & brushed up close to a piece of driftwood?
Nope.
I got out of the water & there on my thigh was a disgusting purple circle of hate. Outlining the purple circle of hate were small red gashes trickling blood. Oh sh*t mom, It's too bad you didn't believe me...TOO BAD YOU WEREN'T IN THE WATER ALSO GETTING EATEN ALIVE BY THIS BEAST!!!'
At that point, since MaryAnne had satisfactory evidence that there WAS something in the water, everyone was pulled out & rushed over to 'inspect' me.
I don't remember too much about the conversation that ensued after wards (like I said, adrenaline). What I do remember is that no one, not maryAnne or dad or Brian or BG thought it would be a good idea to take me to the hospital to get a tetanus/rabies shot after god-knows-what had gotten it's hell-spit in to my blood steam. Yes, these the very same people that tried to force me to go to the ER after I stuck a raisin up my nose.
What I do remember is that I (luckily) felt fine aside from the external muscle pains. We continued the weekend at which time the bruise (about the size of a grapefruit) grew darker & darker. Please believe me that I make no exaggeration when stating that this bruise was BLACK. Not purple, not blue, BLACK. This is all the more embarrassing when coupled with the fact that I am possibly the whitest white person on the planet. I suppose my one claim to fame is that I was once the whitest whitey with a grapefruit sized black hole on her upper right thigh.
All said & done, I could never confirm what had bitten me. What I do know is that my dad watched around the dock area & was convinced that it was a turtle.
At first, I thought he was cray-cray. One of those cute little helmet heads that you have to slam on your breaks for so they can cross the street did not just mutilate me. Dad then told me that we were talking about a snapping turtle that looked like this:
The turtles will eat anything that will fit in to their gullets including fish, frogs, snakes, birds, small mammals & the pasty thighs of little ginger girls.
For the next couple of years dad always cast his fishing lure over to the turtle whenever he saw his smug little head poking out of the lake. He said we'd have turtle soup & I'd be avenged. You took a bite out of me, I'll take a bite out of you right?
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