Trail of Ants

Staring intimidatingly into two fresh black eyes, I barked menacingly, ‘reach for the sky!’. No response. I yelled, ‘this town aint big enough for the two of us’. Zip. ‘It’s not a laser. It’s a little light bulb that blinks’. Nothing. ‘Somebody’s poisoned the waterhole!’. Nada. ‘Who are you calling busted, Buster?’. Zippo. He just slumped aloofly on his backside upon a grassy verge, nonchalantly chomping his way through a mound of bamboo. The lardy giant panda was seemingly uninterested in impressions of my beloved Woody, yet the cowboy in me refused to be repressed. A few days after my showdown with the 50-or-so Chengdu pandas, I was in the one-horse town of Songpan, trotting unstably towards the magically entitled, Ice Mountain. Continue reading ‘To Songpan, and beyond!’