The men of the Poppaumowmow tribe were returning to the cave after a hard day of hunting. They went in and threw the rabbit down. One dead rabbit. They saw the look on the women’s faces and the leader, Umgawa, announced, “We had a bear cornered. We attacked with our spears and clubs and hurt him bad. We also irritated him bad and ,well, Tooga won’t be back.”

The women didn’t say anything. They knew if they did it would set the men off on one of their you sit on your fat behinds doing nothing, when are you going to clean this filthy cave up, what’s for supper routines. They had spent the day gathering nuts, berries and vegetables. That’s supper, Thank God.

There were 13 men in the tribe and 9 women. 12 men now that Tooga was gone. Three of the men would guard the cave against the Big Cats at night.

“After all”, Umgawa told them, “it’s not like you have anyone to do tonight.”

What Umgawa didn’t know was that these unlucky ones would have let the Big cat in. Maybe the Big Cat would get rid of a couple of the guys and, heck, nothing wrong with comforting a grieving widow. It had been known to happen.

As dawn broke over the cave, Umgawa went outside to find the guards sound asleep and snoring. That alone probably kept the Big cats away. still, as the leader, he had to say something to them.

“Hey, what if a Big cat had come along. It could have gotten into the cave!”

“Uh, yea, it could have. We wouldn’t want that”, Fana replied as he wiped the drool from his mouth. He had been having a great dream about Blundi, the one with the large chest.

Breakfast was nuts and fruit as always. The guys were sick of it after all these years but that’s what there was. They looked to another day of hunting and hoping. Hoping to kill enough meat for the whole tribe and hoping not to be killed by what they were hunting. Clubs and spears were only so good.

Oldmun, the Shaman, sprinkled blood on then before they left. he thought it would bring them success and keep him from being used as bait in a bear trap.

“”Hey, what are you doing, you idiot! Don’t you know that blood attracts sharks. Are you crazy? Do you want to become bait?”, Umgawa yelled at him.

Umgawa went over to kiss his woman goodbye but saw what she looked like in daylight and decided not to. It was good that he forgot by nightime or there wouldn’t be any little Umgawa’s running around. His wife was just as pleased as he was. She called him Crapbreath to the other women.

Umgawa had become the leader when the former leader fell off a cliff. No one understood why he was that close to the edge or why there were drag marks in the dirt. Umgawa said it was a terrible loss but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. He never went near a cliff and he never let anyone walk too close to him. He wasn’t taking a header over a cliff.

The men smelled this awful odor. They tracked it to a dead mammoth. This thing was really ripe. They gagged and vomited for a while. Umgawa saw this a their big chance to please the women. It would make up for a lot of berries and nuts. The smell was a problem. As soon as the women smelled this thing they would know the men didn’t kill it. They would be suspicious of the safety of eating it.

After thinking on it for a long time, Umgawa told the men to build a huge fire. Then they rolled the mammoth over onto the for the rest of the day. As dusk fell, the smell wasn’t too bad. The meat didn’t smell much different than they did. They cut huge slices of it and went back to the cave in triumph.

This started the barbecue rage.