No one knows how long a Scamper lives for sure, but Gramps said that when he was a soldier, Scampers moved like lightning and could easily catch anyone they chased. But now, Scampers don’t run much faster than a big dog or wolf. They never stop chasing you, unless you can make them lose your scent, but they don’t run as fast as they used to either. The one we killed and almost killed me and did kill Brady, last year moved fast, but not nearly as fast as the one who killed Frank and Susy; a couple who joined us for a while when I was like 13. By the time someone reads this journal there may not even be any more Scampers, so for what Momma would have called prosperity, I will tell you some things about them now. As I already wrote, they don’t have sex things, just huge, sharp teeth and claws. They have no hair, just armor like plates all over their bodies and when my Pops was young, some men still had guns and bullets. In my life, I had only heard one gunshot, ever fired. Every hunter I know or ever knew, now use a homemade bow or if you really have a talent, a crossbow. I never had a talent for making crossbows; neither did Gramps or Pops, so we just made bows. Good, strong bows, but just bows.To kill a Scamper with a bow or even a knife, you had to get it in the earhole, eye or throat, through its opened mouth. The metal like plates, which covered the Scamper from head to toe, couldn’t be penetrated by an arrow or even the stronger crossbow bolt. Gramps said a man with a gun called a sniper rifle, firing .50 cal ammo could do the job, but no one I ever knew had one of those. We killed the Scamper, who killed Brady, by jamming an arrow into its earhole, while it was tearing me up. To be honest, I got lucky. If I missed its earhole, with my first attempt to ram the metal arrowhead into its ear hole, I wouldn’t have had the strength left to try it a second time. As it was, I nearly bled to death before Pops and Gramps got me stitched up and they were right there with me. But the good thing about jamming an arrow into a Scamper’s earhole is that the arrow head kills the Scamper so fast that there ‘death howl’ is so short that maybe no other Scamper will hear it long enough to get your location, for sure. But still, we left that place, just to be safe. Scampers all have red eyes and are about the size of a very large dog called a Great Dane, not that you would want to run into one of them either, since almost all dogs have been what Gramps called feral, since before Pops was born. Scampers were usually about 30 to 32 inches at the shoulder, when running on all fours, taller than Pops when standing only on their hind legs. I never heard of a Scamper weighing less than 150 pounds either. Their teeth and claws are sharper than any knife made by man and can even shred through thin metal, without much trouble. They were usually black, brown or grey in color, though sometimes you would see a brownish red colored one or if you are very lucky, a whitish colored one, if it is within months of dying from old age. And of course, the fact that most Scamper sleep during the coldest winter months is good news and let’s humans rest up, while the snows are falling. But at the first signs of spring, you better be moving again. At least up north, where we travel until the first snows, then find a place to winter. If any people still live in places called Florida or Southern California, they’re crazy. Gramps says that because it doesn’t get cold enough in places like that, the Scampers there never hibernate. So any people still living there would have to watch out for active Scampers all year round. Where we travel, it is winter at least half the year. If we see too many signs of Scamper activity, we move further north.The last thing I want to say about Scampers is that once they get your scent, they will follow you until they catch and eat you; or you hide from them by covering in yourself in thick, wet mud until they are long gone or you kill them. Gramps and Pops both had heard stories of Scampers coming onto a group of twenty or more people and hunting down and killing all of them, spending a month chowing down on their rotting corpses before moving on and looking for fresh meat. Gramps told me the true story about some people his family joined up with, before Pops was even born.
