No End of Food - YSM2023

I'm about to give up here and go home empty handed.

Home? What is that? Archaic concept?

I haven't seen a bird, snake, lizard, or frog in over a month now. Rabbits, squirrels, raccoons? Forget about it. Long gone. Deer? I remember the hunter slogan "Deer are not an endangered specie". Well they seem to be extinct now in North America.

I spin this back in my mind. The various state Fish and Game Departments kept track of populations, numbers, set limits. Sure there was was always some poaching that went on. But imagine 70 million poachers all out poaching at the same time.

It's like that time once when I took a particularly nice looking cactus home from a state park. My mother asked, "What if everybody took a cactus? There wouldn't be any left."

In my wisdom I replied, "But that's just it. Not everyone is taking a cactus. Just me. One time."

But after the beef collapse, followed shortly by the chicken and turkey collapse, that's what happened; 70 million poachers all out poaching all across North America all at the same time. It didn't take long before the game wardens joined the poachers. Deer, elk, long-horns gone in weeks. Bear, wolf, mountain lion soon followed. Salmon, trout, bass; gone. Oyster, clams, crabs; those too.

The World spins and as if from a long distance I hear "Jim. Jim. Snap out of it. You're starting to scare me."

I look at her face "I remember you."

"What do you mean" my girlfriend Sue asks, "you remember me? What the hell? You just spaced out for five minutes. And you remember me? I should hope so."

It takes me awhile to readjust to the present. We're camping by the lake, sitting in front of a campfire.

That was thirty years ago.

Wait! What? Thirty years ago from what?

The World spins out from under me. I'm not by the lake; no Sue; no campfire; no game.

The last thing I remember was that she had said, "We don't have to worry about civilization collapse. There's always living off the land. No end of food."

The End

a reply to: pthena

Grim as anything but a great read

a reply to: pthena

Good one! That's a terrifyingly plausible scenario.

a reply to: SprocketUK

Thank you.

This is what happened:
Encia22 characterized my other story as "black humor".

What else could I do?
So I put on an inspirational song:

and well ...

a reply to: pthena


Well it diod the job !