Among the first settlers of the province of Alberta there were many who liked to make things up and, in general, people who, as they say, did not mince words. But, by all accounts, the three most prominent liars in the Calgary area were the MacDougal brothers, Dave and John. Why three, you ask? Well, the first liar was, of course, Dave, and John... John could easily pass for two!
“When I first saw these places,” Dave said, “there were literally no bison here.” The prairies were simply teeming with herds of bison. There was no way out of them. Believe it or not, sometimes you had to walk on buffalo backs for half an hour before you found a place to jump!
- The true truth! - John confirmed. — There was such a case with me when I was young. I got married and built myself a small cozy house not far from the spring. In the morning my wife wakes me up: go get some water. I go out - that's the thing. A completely different place. What happened? At night a herd of bison passed by. One bison scratched its back on the corner of my house, another scratched itself... While the whole herd had passed, they moved my house half a mile away from the spring. Can you imagine what the herd was like?
One of the unusual natural phenomena in Calgary is the Chinook, a sudden warm wind in the dead of winter. It brings with it a sharp thaw and rapid melting of snow. Old-timers love to surprise visitors with stories about the Chinook.
Dave, for example, often recalled how a bear chased him one winter.
— If it weren’t for the Chinook, I’d be screwed! But it turned out so well that the snow melted behind me at the same speed as I ran away on skis. And the bear, of course, had to chase me knee-deep in mud and slush. This is the only thing that saved me!
And John added:
- Or there was something else. An Indian and his wife were riding from Morley together on one horse, and then suddenly a Chinook blew. They arrived in Calgary, and what happened? The Indian suffered from sunstroke, and his wife, who was sitting behind him, froze to death!
“Yes, the weather is capricious in our area,” Dave reasoned. - Take the summer heat for example. One day at such a time, and it must have been ninety degrees Fahrenheit, I saw a dog chase a cat. I chased, but how? They hobbled along one after another with staggering steps and rested every few meters. That's how sweltering the heat was!
- What else is that! - John said. “And I remember such a drought—it was probably a hundred and ten degrees—that my dog couldn’t take a step at all.” We had to carry her in a wheelbarrow after the herd so that she could at least bark to maintain some order among the cows. It's good that she could bark!
- And the frosts! Have you heard what kind of frosts we have? Not like birds, words freeze in flight. For one farmer, all the orders that he gave to the workers on his farmstead froze at his very lips. It was, as I remember, seventy-five degrees below zero. So, he had to split his words with an ax and distribute a piece to everyone. This was the only way to explain to people what was required of them,
“A similar incident happened with my neighbor,” John echoed Dave. “One frosty day he leaned out into the yard to shout to his pigs to go home, but his words froze in the air, and the pigs did not hear anything. Only in the spring, when it got warmer and the neighbor’s cry melted away, the pigs heard him and returned home. Can you imagine how thin they have become over the winter, poor things!
“It’s a pity that you haven’t seen the local mosquitoes yet,” Dave would explain to some visiting eccentric. “It’s not the season for them yet.” Or maybe it’s your luck that you didn’t see them. The mosquitoes here are huge and disgusting! One day it happened: a whole flock of mosquitoes chased me. I barely had time to run to the house and slam the door behind me, when these damned mosquitoes flew onto the door and, would you believe it, pierced the inch-long boards right through with their sharp proboscis! Without hesitation, I grabbed a hammer and bent all these proboscis from the inside, like nails. Well, I think we got it, darlings! So what? My mosquitoes buzzed, they all moved together, they tore the door out of its hinges and took it with them!
“And the largest mosquitoes,” John added, “are found in Namak.” It's a little further south, on the Montana border. There are such huge mosquitoes there that people plow on them. I saw it myself last year. And the harness is not special, but the simplest, horse harness. You just need to know how to harness it.
As elsewhere, hunting and fishing stories are popular among Calgarians. Here's what Dave McDougal once said:
“There lived in our neighborhood a respectable woman of about fifty, Miss Lou Nelson. She now, they say, runs a hotel in Lake City, Utah. She was a big hunter before fishing. I met her one day near Waterton Lakes and saw her coming back from fishing, thoroughly wet, without a fishing rod, without a catch. “What's the matter?” - I ask. She answers: “Today I was fishing in the middle of the lake with a canoe. And I came across a big fish. The biggest fish, Dave, that I’ve seen in my life. About a hundred pounds, no less. I pulled it up to the boat, and it jerked and hit with its tail! It turned the canoe over and threw me into the water. It’s good that I still had a piece of fishing line in my hands. I threw this fishing line over its face, like bridle, jumped on top of the fish - and kicked its sides with my heels as hard as I could. This monster had to carry me to the shore.” - “Where is the fish itself?” - I ask. Lou looked me straight in the eyes and said: “Do you really think, Dave, that I could kill a creature that, after all, saved my life?”
But here's another story. It is said to have been heard from the lips of John McDougal himself.
— I went fishing one day. I took fishing gear, breakfast, everything as it should be. I approach the river, and suddenly I hear a rustling in the bushes. Look, there's a huge bear there! Coming straight at me. I climbed the tree. The bear came up, sniffed, growled, and then stood on its hind legs and started swinging the poplar back and forth to shake me off the tree. However, I am holding on tight. He growled a little more and went off somewhere. After about ten minutes I decided that the danger had passed and began to climb down from the tree. But that was not the case. I look - my bear is returning. He walks, the dead wood under him cracks, and he has a beaver in his front paws. I climb back to the top of the poplar. And the bear came up, put both beavers on the ground and growled at them. The beavers immediately got to work. Chips flew from under the sharp incisors. Well, I think I'm completely lost. Not even five minutes had passed before the poplar crackled, staggered and fell to the ground. Well, I’m with him, of course...
In this place there was always a simpleton who, worried, butted in with a question:
- So what about the bear?
- Like what? - John answered hesitantly. - He ate me, of course. That's why he's a bear. Predator!
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru