Leopard Warrior

I hadn't fully wakened from my afternoon catnap. That could be the only explanation for what I was seeing.

On a sunny afternoon with temperatures in the high 80's and humidity giving the air the appearance of a gauze curtain, there was no rational reason for someone to be clad in heavy robes.  And yet the man approaching me looked like a Mongolian warlord who had just washed up on the Delaware shore.

While hundreds of others stood at the water's edge in bathing suits and shorts, this one man was covered head to toe in a leopard skin robe and matching wide-brimmed hat. He strode with a purpose that had the folds in the bottom half of the robe billowing. The hat, a leopard skin dome with a wide brim of feathers fluttering in the hot afternoon air currents, looked like something pulled from the closet of Zsa Zsa Gabor.

The man's wife - or perhaps concubine - scurried along at the man's side like a Chihuahua trying to keep up with a Great Dane. Her skinned glistened with the perspiration of her efforts.  If she were that hot in her bathing suit, I could only guess at the rivulet's of sweat that must have been running beneath the man's robes.

I never saw the unlikely couple make a return trip back up the beach. I suppose it was the leopard warrior's intent to drive ever onward taking no prisoners.