It was the kind of day that makes a person grateful to be alive. Early autumn in Southern Illinois. I spent a few hours on Little Grassy Lake, after which the Southern Illinois University Carbondale graduate student literary festival is named.

This story, as is true of many of my stories, was inspired by a Meg Pokrass word prompt. I sat on it a while after writing, then pulled it out, cut the word count at least in half, and now it appears in a cool anthology, Predators in Petticoats, edited by Emily Leverett and Margaret S. McGraw and available for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.