I Think I Just Met Baba Yaga

Ok so I wasn't going to post again until this weekend when I see and marry Jeff Corwin, however, this story needs to be told to the widest audience possible while I am thinking of it: This is the tale of how lucky I am to have not been abducted despite being 23 and not really liking candy enough to follow it into an unmarked van. I got out of work early today and thought to myself, "hey self, you are pretty out of shape, how about a walk?" But I am sick of the bitty park in North Reading where I usually take my dogs and last time I was there there were young people running which just made me feel bad about my lack of inshape-ness. Anyway, I decided to just type PARK into my GPS and see where it led me and Lady (my faithful beagle mix for those of you who don't know). I then decided on Lynn Woods Reservation because I know LynnFIELD and I like the woods. This is where the bad choices begin. For anyone who lives in MA you may know that Lynn isn't the most awesome area and that Lynn woods is HUGE. Anyway, there were no maps left in the box but I decided I wouldn't need one since I was only going to wander for maybe an hour and I have an ok head for trails (wrong). SO If you know me, you know I clearly wandered off the main trail and onto little interesting side trails and promptly got lost. But rather than retracing my steps I continued on a trail that went vaguely in the direction I wanted until I got to the main path again...I then discovered that the main path branched into two equally unfamiliar looking paths and I stood there for a little while. Then I met Baba Yaga (if you don't know who Baba Yaga is please click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga). Here is Baba Yaga:

Anyway, Baba Yaga came around the bend suddenly, and being quite short and elderly and dressed all in black I registered her at first as a bear and jumped about a mile (Baba Yaga being the first other human I had seen on the trail in a good half hour). Anyway, I realised it wasn't a bear and just an old woman and asked her which way to the parking lot. She muttered something in Russian and then pointed to the right fork. Off I went to discover that Lynn Woods are HUGE and thus have MULTIPLE parking lots...So this time we met again as I was walking back from the parking lot that did not contain my car. Baba Yaga asked if I had found what I was looking for and I said no, and that I hadn't known there was more than one parking lot and had gotten turned around somehow. She directed me to the map box which was empty and then said something in Russian followed by "we will go in my car"...At this point I thought maybe the Russian part might had been "My, you would make a tasty soup" (please bear in mind that I had been wandering in the woods lost for about 45 minutes with a dead cellphone and was not in a great state of mind). Anyway, I declined and said I would just keep looking at which point she said "Oh no, we will go in my car, I know other parking lot". So I decided that despite being Baba Yaga, she really was probably about my height and I could probably take her if she didn't use ancient Russian magic on me. So my dog gave me a "what is wrong with you" kind of look as we hopped into Baba Yaga's car and began driving around. We then got lost a few times, she began swearing in Russian at other drivers, and it got later and later. I then began looking for a house on chicken legs (or possibly one made of gingerbread) which she was clearly taking me too at this point.

Anyway, turns out she wasn't Baba Yaga, she was just an elderly Russian woman who had moved to the states about 15 years ago. In Russia she apparently had a little dog who looked a lot like mine which maybe was the reason she took pity on me. She also kept up a stream of Russian conversation to my dog the entire drive which was adorable. She also got me back to my car eventually, and here I am now. Here is a picture of the witch from Spirited Away which she also had an uncanny resemblance to (only less terrifying):

I am aware this has very little to do with critters, but I was in the woods so it counts.

THE END