A Direct Skunk Hit

I don't know what it going on, but I have seen more skunks around this fall than I have seen in the previous seven years we've lived here combined.

A few weeks ago, the eldest child came to find me late at night to let me know that a skunk had sprayed directly under his window and that it was too awful in his room to sleep. He moved onto the couch for the night. Shortly after that, the dogs sounded the alarm in the shop, and A. went out to find a small skunk wedged against the shop's foundation wall, under a shelf. He managed to shoot it anyway and we disposed of it. The dogs were slightly stinky, but didn't sustain any damage from the encounter.

This morning at 5:30, I was sitting in my room with the window open when I smelled the unmistakable presence of a skunk. And then the dogs again started barking frantically, this time in the covered porch that is right out our front door.

I grabbed a flashlight and opened the front door to find Jasper on the front steps and a skunk right next to the steps with its tail raised.

I stood in our front door to take this photo. The skunk was right between that jug of vinegar and the red jacket.

I closed the door and alerted A. By the time he got his pistol loaded, the skunk was gone. The dogs had left their defensive positions. Partially they gave up because once I arrived, they considered their job done. But also, the skunk sprayed. Right there. On our front steps. And directly in Jasper's face, I think.

When A. went out to find the skunk gone, Jasper was hiding in the corner, making little gasping noises and with his eyes streaming tears. He had clearly gotten the spray in his eyes and also inhaled some. I looked online to see what we should do, but the suggestions of flushing his eyes out with saline solution or bathing his head with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, etc. didn't seem too practical for one of our feral dogs. They are not accustomed to being handled, and he was obviously in distress. I think we would have gotten a pretty good bite for our troubles.

The internet also said we should take him to a vet. Given the nearest vet is 100 miles away, I decided to wait a bit on that one and see what happened.

In the meantime, our entire house absolutely reeked of skunk. I have never smelled anything like it. A strong skunk smell is a bit like really strong tire rubber. This was like that, but more chemically and a little like garlic. If garlic smelled like tires and chemicals. It was bad. SO bad. And everywhere in the house.

The smell actually woke all the children up. There wasn't much I could do. I don't buy scented candles, although we do have three religious candles with saints on them that A. bought at the grocery store many years ago for the children. These are lightly scented, so I lit them and gave two to the youngest children, who brought them into Poppy's room. This is a small room, with no outside windows or anything, so they could kind of seal it off. 

They also asked me for some of my perfume. I bought a set of sample fragrances awhile ago so I could try a bunch, and I still had some. I gave this to them.

A plethora of options.

They chose Versace White Diamond and sprayed it liberally in Poppy's room.

The eldest child barricaded himself in his bedroom and sprayed his cologne in there. Amusingly, this is Versace Eros. So now that entire side of the house smells like a Versace scent factory.

I, meanwhile, sat at the dining room table with the St. Martin candle directly under my nose.

Being careful not to burn my nose, of course.

As soon as it was light, I was out the door in search of fresh air. An excellent incentive to get out for my run this morning. 

Jasper was still in his corner, but when I came out, he got up and went on my run with me. His eyes seemed fine, although he did stop several times to rub his head in the tall grasses and I caught his unfortunate stench anytime I was downwind of him.

The face of a dog who will not be getting any petting in the near future.

The kitchen, which is pretty close to the front door, still smells bad, even with all the windows open. For this reason, I allowed the eldest child to eat his breakfast in his bedroom. The younger children ate theirs in the van.

Well-ventilated, and with handy cup holders for their chocolate milk.

I can only hope that skunk took off for a far-off destination, never to be seen again. And that we don't get any more skunky visitors this fall.

Addendum: How naive of me to think the skunk was gone! Just now, hours after the excitement, I was coming up the front steps and saw something black and furry wedged under the firewood rack right next to the steps. Like literally eight inches from where my feet were. For a second I thought it was one of the dogs. But they had gone on a walk with one of the kids. Could it be the skunk, which had hidden itself RIGHT NEXT TO MY FRONT STEPS?

Yup. Apparently the dogs were so traumatized by their run-in with it, they just decided it could live next to our steps forevermore.

This time A. had his pistol ready to go and dispatched it quickly. But it did not go gently into that good night, instead sending out more waves of putrid stench as it died. Next to my front door.

Thanks a lot, skunk. And good riddance.

Growing Food: Good Riddance to Bad Rodents

I lost an entire bed of lettuce and green beans to what I thought was a nocturnally marauding rabbit. I re-planted some green beans, and they came up nicely

Little bean in the shadow of the big bean.

There seemed little point in planting more, however, if they're just going to get eaten by a rabbit, too.

A. had an idea that it might not be a rabbit, though. He set a rat trap in that bed, and sure enough . . .

Filthy thing.

No more than it deserved. And I hope this is the last rodent incursion for the summer. I have a hard enough time getting my plants to harvest without that.

What Stalks in the Night

 

Good news! It didn't freeze Tuesday night! We squeaked by with 33 degrees, which means all the battling I did with covers in the howling wind to protect my tomato plants was unnecessary. That's okay by me, though. It's going to get warm again, and I anticipate some good harvests of green beans and tomatoes. I'm very glad none of the plants died.

Something else did die that night, though: a sheep. And that is definitely a story you don't hear every day. I will tell it, with fair warning that it involves nature in a somewhat grisly form. 

Although we didn't know it, the drama actually began late in the afternoon. The sheep and the horse were together in the field adjoining our next-door "new" house, which is visible from our kitchen windows. We were eating dinner when Cubby jumped up from the table, saying, "What are the sheep doing? They're running. And the horse is going crazy!"

The sheep were bunched up in the way that they do when they feel threatened, and the horse was galloping around, which is not something he does unless greatly agitated. We thought maybe there had been a rattlesnake or something, so Cubby and A. went out and looked around a bit. They didn't see anything, so A. wrote it off as a nervous reaction to the incredibly high winds and changing weather.

When night fell, the horse was back in his pen near the house, and the sheep were in the vineyard pasture that A. had fenced off for them to eat all the weeds in it. The vineyard pasture is right behind the house, and it adjoins the same pasture the sheep had been in earlier. I was just about to go to bed when Cubby came running out of his room, saying there was a commotion in the pasture. 

His window looks out on the vineyard pasture and the horse pen, and he heard the two dogs going nuts and the horse whinnying and galloping around. A. took his spotlight out to investigate. He found the dogs in with the sheep. They had the flock all rounded up in a bunch in a corner of the pasture. 

These dogs come from cattle-working breeds and are instinctual herders, so A. figured they were just having a little fun and scolded them before putting the sheep back into the next-door pasture and closing the gate so the dogs couldn't get at them. He shut the dogs in the porch for good measure, to ensure no more unauthorized activity.

The horse was hysterical, A. assumed in reaction to the sheep's nervousness and running around, so A. went in with Samson and patted and soothed him a little.

The next morning, just as we were about to all get on the bus for school, A. came in to tell us there was a sheep dead only about six feet from the house, practically under Cubby's bedroom window. It's throat had been ripped out and a few bites taken from its udder. 

It was clearly not a natural death. The question was, what killed it?

Here's what A. thinks happened. A mountain lion was passing through when it smelled the sheep and stopped to investigate. It was probably hiding somewhere around all the old sheds and things by the next-door pasture when the sheep and horse got so agitated in the late afternoon. Then it jumped the fence and took down the sheep when night fell. It only got a few bites before the dogs chased it off, though, and shortly after that, A. went outside. He didn't see the dead sheep in the dark.

Mountain lions generally live in the canyons here, where the larger game animals live and where there is plenty of cover for the lions' preferred stalking method of hunting. They do sometimes travel on the plateau where we live, particularly when the weather is changing. They are very large--males are over 100 pounds--almost completely fearless, and undaunted by fences. 

They will also kill small women and children, so it's definitely not something you want to have around your house. And I was not too easy in my mind when I considered Cubby tromping around the pasture in the afternoon while a mountain lion watched him from its hiding place.

A. made sure his spotlight and gun were ready last night, but everything remained quiet, so it's most likely that the animal has moved on. The ewe that was killed was a very old one we were going to cull anyway. She was already bloated and inedible by the time A. found her, but there wasn't much meat on her anyway, so it wasn't a great loss.

The real heroes here are Jasper and Odin, who chased off a predator that outweighs them by fifty pounds or more. Those dogs are apparently entirely unafraid of any animal, and those are definitely the kind of dogs we need to have.

As A. said, we had gotten accustomed to living here, considering it just like anywhere. And then we get a reminder like this that we do indeed live in a remote and wild place, where mountain lions might appear at any time.

Some Small Slices

Let's just say that these photos and the accompanying explanations are small slices of the bizarre pie that is our life. Because there's really no other connecting theme.

We'll start with yesterday and work back in time.

Slice #1

In the summer, it is often the case that I spend all day trying to get my children to stay outside, and then they go out about an hour before bedtime. That means that then I have a very hard time getting them back IN.

It's very annoying.

On the plus side, though, we do all get to see skies like this as I'm marching them inside by the ear. (Literally.)

The view to the east looked alarmingly like a mushroom cloud.

And the view to the west looked much more impressive in person. (Both photos--plus about two dozen identical ones--taken by Cubby.)

Slice #2

There is a bull snake that hangs around our property. Cubby has named him Howard. Howard is liable to turn up anywhere, but the other day, the dogs' frantic barking alerted us to the fact that Howard had turned up under the bunk bed in the covered porch*.

We put the dogs in the shop to get them out of the way, then A. nudged Howard out from under the bed and out the door. The children were thrilled to be able to examine Howard up close.

Relatively speaking, that is.

Given that Howard is most likely the same snake that struck at me in the chicken coop, I don't feel quite so friendly towards him as the children do. However, bull snakes do eat rats and gophers, so I grudgingly tolerate his presence.

Slice #3

Remember that goldfish pond Cubby was excavating in the back pasture? Well, he hasn't gotten it big enough for goldfish yet, but it was certainly big enough to make a satisfying children's pond when it filled up after several big rains.

Muddy play is the best play.

Okay, I think that's a big enough pie for now. Over and out.

* Yes, there is a bunk bed in our porch, left there by the previous owner. I think his nephews used to sleep out there when they were visiting. We use the top bunk to store junk we don't want the kids to get. The bottom bunk is now a dog bed, and the space under the bed is also a dog den.

As the World Burns

Yesterday I went into the chicken coop to check for eggs and a snake hissed and lunged out of one of the other nesting boxes at me.

WOAH THERE.

Let me tell you how not happy I was about that. SO NOT HAPPY. I hate snakes. Especially being surprised by one in an enclosed space.

I couldn't see it very well, because it retreated back into the box and I didn't have a flashlight. I was pretty sure it was a non-venomous bull snake, though, rather than a rattlesnake. I still retreated, but when I cautiously re-entered a few minutes later with a long stick, it was gone.

There was, however, a dead chick in the coop this morning. Dammit.

Also yesterday, the entire south and east horizons were a wall of smoke.

A wildfire sparked by lightning started just five miles south of us on Saturday, and by yesterday had burned thousands of acres and was threatening the village, along with several ranches in its path. The 30-mile-an-hour winds made it pretty much impossible to control, and I was getting a lot of phone calls from neighbors offering places to stay if we needed to leave, a place for our horse, or just information.

I had a bag packed with clothes and in the van if we needed to leave quickly, but thankfully the wind was in our favor and it never came closer to us.

It is still burning, though, and friends of ours are still re-locating their livestock in case they have to evacuate, so it's not over yet.

I could use a break now, okay, universe? Just . . . just lay off for awhile with the anxiety-inducing situations, please.

Shot Him an Elk When He Was Only Nine

Warning: Dead animal photo ahead. 

An interesting thing about the state of New Mexico is that there is no minimum hunting age. And that is why nine-year-old Cubby--who completed his hunter education course just this spring--was able to enter his own name in for the elk draw this year. And draw a tag for a mature bull elk in a hunting area about two hours from here.

Now. Some things you should know about this place where he got his tag. It is a mountain. It is a high mountain. It is a high, remote, cold mountain with no road going up it.

The prospect of taking a nine-year-old hunting on a mountain in October on a hunt that would require camping, hiking several miles, and packing out hundreds of pounds of meat in the event of Cubby actually shooting an elk would probably seem ridiculous to most men.

Luckily for Cubby, his father is not most men. A. was all, "He drew for that mountain, and he's going to hunt that mountain."

On a positive note, more than one person told A. that that area is the best for elk in the entire state, and because A. and Cubby were planning on hiking in about five miles, they were unlikely to see any other hunters.

They scouted the mountain a couple of weeks ago and found that our Honda won't go to the top of the track that goes part of the way up, so that meant that they would have to hike in from fairly far down. And since they were going to be camping up there, that meant they had to carry all their gear on their backs all the way.

Because it was dry the weekend of the hunt, A. decided to do without a tent. But because it was cold--well below freezing--he brought two sleeping bags for Cubby and one for him, plus wool blankets. His pack was incredibly heavy just with the bedding, ammunition, and other sundry things. That meant that Cubby carried all the food in his pack.

They hiked in six miles to their first campsite.

See those two teeny tiny peaks way in the distance? They went to the top of the one on the right. Insane.

Luckily for them, my brother--who is also an experienced hunter--was able to fly into Albuquerque and meet them at the mountain for the hunt. I felt much better having another adult there, just in case, and A. felt a lot better having another adult there to help him pack out the meat, just in case. Also, my brother took all the photos.

Like this cool one with the moon in the background.

It was a strenuous, physical hunt, with a lot of hiking and stalking and crawling around in the underbrush. They camped out for two nights and hunted all day Saturday with no success. But first thing Sunday morning . . .

Victory.

Cubby shot that elk right through the heart, a perfect shot, from 35 yards away.

Then the real fun began, as A. gutted, skinned, and boned out the meat at high speed so he and my brother could pack it all the way back to the car. They carried their own packs with all the gear they packed in, along with a game bag of meat weighing approximately one hundred pounds. Each. Five miles.

Do you know how brutal that is? So brutal. And Cubby carried the elk's rack on his own pack, which is a not-insignificant weight when you only weigh 70 pounds yourself.

They made it, though, and we now have about a thousand dollars worth of meat in our freezer and one very, very proud young hunter.

Maybe not as dramatic as Davy Crockett's bear when he was only three, but pretty damn good for nine years old.

The Serpent in the Garden

Jack had a very scary encounter with a snake last night. Scary because this snake was not small; it was not a harmless garter snake; and it was not hiding quietly in the green beans.

Last night after dinner, A. and Jack went outside to continue work on a stone wall A. is building adjoining the patio. Jack ran out first onto the patio and stepped right over a rattlesnake. On the patio. Eight feet from the door. Directly in the path we always take to go into the back pasture.

Holy shit.

The snake was probably there because the sky had clouded over and it was seeking the warmth of the stones that had absorbed the sun's heat. It didn't rattle or, thank God, strike as Jack ran over it, though it did coil up.

A. was right behind Jack, saw the snake just as Jack ran over it, and yelled out that there was a rattlesnake and GET AWAY. Jack veered right off into the driveway and ran a safe distance away. The snake had still not moved.

It was a pretty big rattlesnake--about two feet long--so A., rather than use a hoe or a shovel or anything that required him to get within a handle's length of the snake, got his gun and shot it in the head.

All of the other children of course joined in at this point in the proceedings to observe the snake and hear all the details of the encounter. Charlie, being Charlie, requested the rattle. A. got out the hatchet to cut off the rattle, but took the precaution first of cleanly cutting off the head and throwing it over the fence.

And still, five minutes after its head was blown off, when A. went to cut off the rattle, the snake's body tried to strike A. WITHOUT ITS HEAD.

Freakiest thing ever.

Anyway.

Charlie got his rattle, no one got a snake bite, and Jack's guardian angel should get a promotion and a pay raise.

The end, and three cheers for a happy ending.

Just Call Me Tenderfoot

After fifteen years of living in upstate New York, I'd forgotten how many things in the west are poisonous. I didn't have to worry about the kids getting bitten by a snake there, because there weren't any poisonous ones where we lived. Ditto spiders.

But now it's a whole new ballgame.

Jack, Poppy, and I went to the village playground this afternoon and met another mom and her two young children there. The mom grew up here, and she and her husband now run their family ranch.

Her little girl--who is going to be in the preschool class with Jack--wanted to go to the preschool playground at the school, which is not currently being used as preschool doesn't start until after Labor Day. So we went over there.

Jack went under the play structure to play with a little spinning thing under there, and came back out announcing there were spider webs under there. I didn't think much of it, but the other mom went under there and asked Jack to show her the spider webs. And then she backed out, saying that was a black widow spider's web with a black widow in it.

Oh. Sure glad someone around here is cognizant of the dangers of this environment.

Black widows are the most venomous spider on the continent. They only bite when disturbed, but I should imagine a bunch of preschoolers would provide sufficient disturbance. Their venom doesn't kill a healthy adult, but it can kill small children.

So. You know. Not the best resident of a preschool playground.

She went into the school to tell the maintenance guy, who appeared with a can of bug spray and presumably took care of it.

Jack took great delight in telling everyone he found the most poisonous spider in the world today. And I'm glad he learned a good lesson without any injury.

A Light in the Dark

I was up most of last night because only one of my children managed to sleep through the night. The other three were up at various times due to nursing needs, blanket issues, and illness.

As I was sitting on the couch at 3:15 a.m. waiting on the ill child to come out of the bathroom (again), I saw a tiny light moving around outside in the brush. It was a firefly*.

I love fireflies, but rarely see them as the dark hours in the summer coincide with my sleep hours. But this night, I wasn't sleeping, so I saw the lone firefly that had emerged too early in the unseasonable heat. There weren't any other fireflies to respond to its flashing, though, which was kind of sad.

Or maybe anything seems sad when you're sitting on a couch awake in the wee hours.

That's all.

* A poll: Do you call them lightning bugs or fireflies?

Poor Old Pincushion

Yesterday morning Jack, Poppy, and I were just returning from our walk when I heard A. exclaim, "Oh no! Mia got into a porcupine!"

Oh no, indeed.

Not only had she encountered a porcupine, she apparently tried to bite it. I know this because she had at least two dozen quills all over her nose and inside her mouth. She couldn't close her mouth, and she was dripping saliva and blood all over. It was gruesome.

It got a lot more gruesome when A. started pulling the quills out and the blood started coming faster. I pulled out a few that were in her feet, and I was shocked at how thick and stiff the quills were, as well as deeply embedded. My previous experience had been with removing cactus spines from our dog in Arizona. This was much, much worse.

After a few minutes trying to remove them ourselves with hands, tweezers, and pliers, I asked A. to just take her to the veterinarian in the village. He put her in the car and took off, not even calling first. Three hours and $80 later, Mia was back home and weaving drunkenly around as she worked off the last of the anesthetic.

And through all of that, she didn't make a single sound or try to bite. Still the best dog.

She appears to be fully recovered this morning. I think she's learned her lesson about porcupines. I just hope she doesn't encounter a bear next.

The North Country Larder

This morning I had to confiscate a rubber bracelet imprinted with "Jesus Loves You," because it was being treated as a giant rubber band projectile by my precious little gifts from God.

Jesus loves you, but not when you try to take out your brother with a Sunday school bracelet.

Anyway. That has nothing to do with the rest of this post, which is all about a beaver. Or rather, about another beaver*.

And here it is, with its eventual consumers.

That photo, by the way, is totally staged. Jack is holding a trap, which he is not normally allowed to handle. Cubby is holding a hatchet, which he is normally allowed to handle but which doesn't play any part in the trapping of the beaver. And Charlie didn't even go to check the trap, instead just running out for the photo op when the real trappers returned with the rodent and then going back into the warm house to continue building with Tinker Toys. He's holding the trap setting tool. What a fraud.

Anyway again.

Now that A. has trapped another beaver, I am required to make beaver tacos again. I can do without them, personally, but the kids love them. Like LOVE LOVE them. They talk all the time about the beaver tacos we had last year, so of course, when they saw this beaver, they were all, "YAY! Beaver tacos!"

A. and I are less enthusiastic. Beaver meat is okay, but it's awfully . . . red. I know that sounds weird, but it's really, really red, in an almost disturbing way. Kind of like liver, and man, I really hate liver.

No matter, though! It's not about me. A. did all the cutting and trimming of the meat for me, so all I have to do is cook it. Which I did by putting the meat in some water to come to a boil, and then forgetting it was on there when I took Jack down for his nap. I came upstairs to a stove covered in boiled-over beaver juice.

It is about as appetizing as it sounds, yes.

I got that cleaned up, though, and now have the meat successfully simmering gently on the stove. I also have a grouse in the refrigerator to cook. A. shot it when he was deer hunting. Grouse I can wholeheartedly recommend. They taste like really good chicken.

Beaver in the pot, grouse in the refrigerator. It's a northwoods kitchen for sure.

* I just realized I never responded to a person in the comments of that post who asked if we have a lot of beavers in our area and what kind of trap A. uses. The answers are: There are a TON of beavers here. A. is trapping them at a neighbor's hunting cabin, where there are so many that the cabin is in danger of being submerged in the ever-expanding beaver pond. And the traps A. uses are instant kill traps set under water, so they're very humane.

They Got Me, But Good

Yesterday I spent about half an hour in the garden. I planted cucumbers, dill, and filet beans, helped Cubby plant his tomato plant and lettuce plant that he brought home from a field trip to a children's museum, did a little bit of weeding, and got DEVOURED by bugs.

Dammit.

After I came in from the garden I went straight to the kitchen to get to work on rooster stew--Ms. Rita comes through with another rooster, hooray!--and so it wasn't until quite a bit later that I went in to the bathroom and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

I had little spots of dried blood all over my chest, neck, and ears. This is the signature of the wretched black fly. It's very disconcerting to inexplicably see blood all over your skin. You don't even feel them biting, so that blood is the first indication of an attack.

The bites don't actually start to itch until the next day, which would be today. And today I have to drive to a city for a 20-week ultrasound*, which means I will be appearing in public with red, scabby welts all over my neck and chest. Too bad it's not winter. Today would be an excellent day for a turtleneck.

Except NOT not too bad it's winter, because it's supposed to rain all day today, and in winter that would mean four hours of driving in the snow.

Then again, if it was winter, I wouldn't be covered in scabby bug bites.

Anyway.

Off I go, bug bites and all like a real northwoods bumpkin, for my big city adventure. Yee haw.

* FYI if you're thinking of going rural: You may have to drive 170 miles round trip to a big medical center for anything other than routine office visits or an ER. At least, I do. Whee.

Shredded Beaver Tacos

Yes, that's beaver, not beef. And yes, that is what we had for dinner tonight.

Hold up, you say. Beaver? Who eats beaver?

Well, people that trap them, I guess.  Like A.

Long back story there, but the upshot of it is, A. caught a beaver in a trap yesterday and brought it home.

Don't worry, it was dead. We weren't trying to give Jack a ride on a live bucking beaver.

Now obviously, beaver hides are valuable, and that will certainly be saved, but what about the meat? Can you eat beaver?

But of course.

I mean, you can eat anything, really, the question is, will you want to?

Well, let's find out!

First Cubby requested that the tail be frozen for future roasting over a campfire, as described by Steven Rinella in his book Meat Eater. (Good book, by the way.)

Roger that. One beaver tail is now in the freezer with the raccoons*.

And what about the rest of the meat? Well, according to the all-knowing Internet, beaver meat is more or less interchangeable with beef.

Sure it is. 

I always have my doubts about those claims, but I was willing to try it. So A. cut off the front and back legs and the backstraps, and put them to soak in salt water last night.

This morning I dumped out the salt water, dried the pieces, browned them, and simmered them for several hours in a mixture of tomato juice, onions, and garlic.

When the meat was coming off the bone, A. stripped the meat off and we tasted it. 

A. thought it tasted like a cross between beef and dark-meat chicken. I think it's more like the dark-meat chicken, but it's definitely not exactly either of those. It tastes like . . . well, like beaver.

Not bad, though. Certainly no gamier than venison.

I mixed the shredded meat and some of the tomato juice mixture with more onions, garlic, chili powder, and cumin and we ate it in some corn tortillas. 

Everyone ate it and enjoyed it. Cubby and Charlie even gave it two thumbs up, and Cubby had two helpings.

So, can you eat beaver? Yup. You just might have some trouble procuring one . . .

* People have asked if we eat the raccoons, and the answer is, so far, no. I know you can, and people do, but I'm always a bit wary of eating something even the dogs won't touch. Maybe someday we'll try it, but I'm in no hurry.

Forget the Baby--Let's Talk About Fish

Do you know what yesterday was? Yes, April 1, which is popularly known as April Fool's Day. For A., however, April 1 means only one thing: Opening Day of Stream Fishing.

Better than Christmas, you know.

I am not exaggerating when I say that A. looks forward to the opening day of stream fishing starting about, oh, early December. Which happens to be when deer hunting season ends. There may be some desultory trapping and small game hunting in the winter, but nothing compares to the thrill of getting back out to fish the streams in the spring.

That's what he tells me, anyway. I must admit that I don't feel the thrill myself.

So A. loaded up Cubby and the fishing gear in a state of high anticipation yesterday morning, despite the fact that it had snowed six inches the night before and kept on snowing off and on all day.

The North Country says, "Here's your spring, suckers."

Anyway.

The fisherfolk returned after only a couple of hours, which surprised me, because I was pretty sure A. would not give up until they caught something. And he didn't. Give up, that is. He did catch something.

A. came bounding up on the porch and ordered me to go get the camera. "I have to get the tape measure!" he said.

Okay. So that must have been a successful excursion.

Indeed it was. With the aid of the camera and the tape measure, we were able to document that A. caught a 24-inch brown trout.

That is a damn big trout.

For those of you (me) who aren't sure how big a brown trout in a stream might usually get, let me just assure you that they very, very rarely get this big. This is by far the biggest fish A. has ever caught in a stream, and would probably have been big enough to earn him a New York Angler Achievement Award, had he brought it to the hardware store to get it officially weighed*.

He didn't do that, though, so he just has to be satisfied with the personal knowledge that he caught a giant fish.

A. was practically hysterical with excitement, which of course got the kids all worked up.

Obligatory group shot with enormous fish.

The fish was then borne inside with all due reverence to be gutted and cleaned at my kitchen sink.

With a captivated audience to the bloody mess.

I overheard the following from my spot on the couch, out of view of the disgusting proceedings:

Cubby: Hey, look! Its heart is still beating.

GROSS.

A.: Hey, cool! Some of the bugs in its stomach are still alive! Look, kids! See those hellgramites that are moving around?

SO SO GROSS.

Charlie: Can we save the hellgramites?

A. Sure. Put 'em in a jar of water. Mother, can we have a jar of water for the hellgramites?

Charlie: Yeah, it'll be like Cubby's eel! I'll keep them forever.

WHY MUST I BE A PARTY TO THE GROSSNESS. IN MY HOUSE.

The butchery thankfully ended shortly thereafter, and even more thankfully, the hellgramites didn't even make it to bedtime. I announced that they were dead at the bottom of the jar of water and therefore had to be dumped outside.

Sorry, Charlie.

Anyway. That was a big-ass fish that A. is justifiably proud to have caught. And it has now all been recorded for posterity on the permanent record of the Internet.

The end.

* It would have been pretty funny to walk into the hardware store with an enormous slimy fish and ask to put it on their scales, though I'm sure it would hardly be the first time they've had that request at that particular rural hardware store.

Oh, It's Spring?

Great. That means I can banish the dog to the barn at night. Alleluia.

Lemme 'splain.

See, there are many coyotes here. Many, many coyotes, who run the woods freely at night, yipping and howling and generally making their presence known. Now Mia, who is normally the most mild-mannered of dogs, absolutely loathes coyotes. In her younger days, when she was part of a pack, she would actually hunt them. Now that she's old and crippled, and also has no pack except us useless humans, all she can do is bark.

So she does. Any time she hears the coyotes. Which is all. night. long.

I can't really blame her. I mean, there are howling wild beasts out there. She's a dog. She alerts us to their presence. Not that we need alerting. The damned things are often so close they wake us up.

Unfortunately, Mia's barking wakes us up more.

If she's in A.'s garage office at night, which is her customary bedroom, it keeps us awake because the garage shares a wall with our room. It's also right over Jack's room. No good.

If she's outside, she stands on the front porch to bark, which is about twenty feet from our bedroom, and so, of course, it keeps us awake.

If she's in the house, she barks anyway, which of course wakes everyone up. And then we have to let her out to run around and bark until she's cold and tired or the coyotes move along.

This has been making for some bad nights for me and A. Really bad nights.

So last night, after a remarkably warm day, and when I realized it was going to be above freezing all night long, I hauled her bed and water bowl out to the barn and shut her in there for the night. The barn is far enough away that if she did bark, we wouldn't hear her. It's entirely insulated and enclosed, though not warm enough if the weather stays below freezing for awhile.

But last night? To the barn you go, Mia. I hope you enjoy your night. We certainly will.

Of course, "spring" doesn't mean the same thing here that it does in many places, so it's going to be three degrees tomorrow night. Which means Mia will be in the house again. I can only hope the coyotes play elsewhere.

Unappetizing

I was planning on making meatloaf for dinner tonight. I made tuna noodle casserole last night, which I think means that I am a 1960's housewife, right? Except my tuna noodle casserole didn't involve any cream of anything soup from a can, and I had to use 100% corn pasta instead of regular gluten-laden noodles. It was still good, though.

Anyway. Meatloaf.

Meatloaf requires ground beef. The ground beef is in the big freezer downstairs. Also in the big freezer downstairs, unfortunately directly in front of the ground beef, is a garbage bag full of raccoon skins awaiting tanning*.

We had ham steaks instead. Because I could reach those without hauling out the raccoons.

Deer hearts in the car and raccoon skins in the freezer. This is life in the woodchuck lane.

* A. gets them tanned and uses the tanned hides to make hats and mittens for the kids. Fur mittens are the only thing that will always keep their hands warm. So I acknowledge the raccoons' utility, but I begrudge them freezer space nonetheless. 

Why I Don't Do Meal Planning*

****WARNING: Dead animal photos ahead****

Because sometimes, dinner is caught accidentally in a trap and proudly borne home to me by my mighty mini-trappers.

This is a snowshoe hare that very unluckily for it walked into a fisher trap A. had set behind our house.

Unluckily for it, but lucky for us. It was delicious.

* Actually I don't do meal planning because I find it irritating to have something I'm supposed to do because it's on a list. I don't take direction well. Even from myself.

When Woodchucks Go Hiking

We went for a family hike this morning in some very nice pine woods. Jack was in the pack; Mia was with us; it was all fine family fun. Cubby and Charlie were trotting along quite merrily with their sticks, until it warmed up and we got to a different kind of forest (more hardwoods than evergreens) and the bugs started, well, bugging us. Cubby and Charlie got fussy about the bugs--probably also they were just tired at that point--so we turned around to come home.

A. suggested that perhaps they would like to run barefoot on the path on the way back. Most of the path was heavily covered with a nice springy layer of pine needles and they thought this was swell. A. decided to join them in their barefoot trail run, leaving Jack and me the only ones still with shoes.

After a brief stop at a stream to (fail to) catch minnows and frogs, eat some nuts and drink some water, we rallied the troops for the last half mile or so. Cubby and Charlie were not too pleased to press on. Jack was quite excited about running down the trail on his own tiny legs. He fell a lot, but seemed happy enough. Charlie was so unhappy and whiny and slow, I suggested to A. that maybe Charlie could ride in the pack, because I was ready to be out of those woods by then, thanks very much.

Charlie thought this was a great plan. Charlie is so skinny, A. couldn't even tell the difference between carrying him and carrying Jack. We continued on in this way for a little while, until Jack became too distracted by toxic berries and tree roots that wouldn't budge despite persistent pulling, and I scooped him up to speed up and catch up to the rest of the crew.

When I reached them, A. insisted on taking Jack and carrying him on his shoulders. Charlie was still in the pack, so A. basically stacked the two younger children and continued on. Still barefoot, remember. As was Cubby.

And then, just before we came to the trailhead, Mia dived into the brush and emerged with a twitching juvenile cottontail rabbit clenched in her jaws.

Awesome.

I spent the last ten minutes of the hike hoping fervently that we didn't encounter anyone else on the trail. Perhaps they might have looked askance at a barefoot man packing two children, trailed by a third barefoot child and a large dog with a dead rabbit in its mouth.

Perhaps definitely.

We finally made it back to the car, disposed of the rabbit (much to Cubby's voluble displeasure, but rabbits can have a lot of parasites in warm weather, so we thought we'd better not risk it), buckled everyone into their seats, and came home.

Fine family fun, indeed. For a family of woodchucks, anyway.

In Which It Gets Real

After  an unnecessarily long trip back to the new house in the north woods on Saturday (it is road construction season, after all), we arrived home just in time to set up the kids' beds and have dinner before there was a knock on our door. It was our nearest neighbor.

Hooray for the Welcome Wagon!

Except instead of a plate of cookies or the take-out menus for nearby restaurants*, she came bearing her phone, on which she showed us a picture of the bear that was in her backyard the day before.

Oh. Welcome to the north woods.

She lives only about a quarter mile down the road, and the photo was taken by their motion-activated wildlife camera at 12:10 in the afternoon the day before. It was a really big black bear, presumably there to eat the berries. She said she knew we had small children and she wanted to make sure we knew about the bear so we could be careful with them. And maybe keep the dog inside.

Righty-o. Guess I shouldn't be letting the kids out by themselves to pick berries, then.

We haven't seen any sign of the bear since then, so we can only hope it's moved on.

I'm mostly unpacked; I've been to the grocery store and the village library twice already; and I am preparing to go to the cheese factory store right now to stock up on all my dairy needs, so we're settling in nicely. Assuming the (flaky) dude actually shows up to install our internet tomorrow, I may actually be able to use a computer at my house instead of driving ten miles to the library.

If you don't hear from me tomorrow, the guy either didn't show up, or I got eaten by a bear. Anything's possible here on the frontier.

* "Nearby restaurants." HAHAHAHAHAAAAA. There are none.

The Domination of the Bullhead

Nothing fosters self-esteem like landing a big, ugly, bulbous-headed bullhead from the dock. Good work, Cubby. Time for another fish fry.