One of my slightly fiendish habits involves making up harmless, ridiculous facts and passing them off as reality.  Usually, it starts innocently enough.  Someone wonders aloud what the name of some animal is or how some phenomenon got to be that way anyway, and I answer them jokingly.  Then I realize they believe me. 

I was lucky to have such an opportunity recently.  I spent Friday enjoying Waimea Canyon and Kokee State Park.  This is an unbelievably beautiful area; a canyon that could be called “grand” even if without capitalization, with waterfalls, red terrain, distant ocean, and rippling cliffs.  I admired various overlooks and took a lovely, if fairly short, hike. 

Throughout the park, as in the rest of Kaua’i, there was an abundance of chickens wandering about, crossing the road, and doing all the things one might expect of chickens.  At one overlook, a group of tourists were staring at a bird that looked a bit more grouse-like than chicken-like.  One of them wondered aloud what it was and commented that it looked somewhat like a grouse but also like a chicken. 

I overheard, and mentioned that the bird was actually a gricken, half grouse, half chicken.  When they started checking the pronunciation, and commenting to one another about the gricken, I realized they’d believed me, and I embellished the story somewhat about how grickens are only found in this area.  Later, as I wandered away, I heard a boy calling his father over to look at the gricken. 

Wildlife in national and state parks are a (pardon the expression) perfect target for such opportunities.  Best, just when you get known for making up stories, you can pull a reversal.  After several incidents of convincing Devon of some made-up facts about marmots, I discovered that Whistler, in Canada, is actually named for the whistling of the hoary marmot.  This was too good to be true but, best of all, it was.  So, of course, I made sure to find an opportunity to tell Devon about Whistler and the hoary marmot in my best “I’m making it up” voice.  She laughed, having (she thought) wised up to my marmot-based tall tales.  She laughed again when, months later, she finally looked this fact up and realized that I wasn’t making it up after all.

And who knows; maybe the gricken really is a gricken.