The…End?

Skill Sets I Have Acquired (And Didn’t Know I Would Ever Need)

1.    How to bank a fire in a wood burning stove to keep a constant house temperature of 70 degrees.

2.    How to maintain control (physical and emotional) while riding a quad sideways as it slides down a muddy road.

3.    How to stack a woodpile to maximize individual pieces while minimizing the space it consumes.

4.    How to pack 24 cubic yards of crap onto a quad that only has 12 cubic yards of space.

5.    How to minimize the number of articles of clothing I have to carry daily to replace the ones I get muddy.

6.    How to reach that impossible place on your back to scratch the one place the mosquitos always know to bite.

7.    How to change out a propane tank and relight the pilot in less than 30 seconds.

8.    How to build a house (and in the process, the foundation of a lasting relationship) from scratch.

9.    Why you should never fall in love with someone else’s property (because it will always be someone else’s property).

Well gang, it’s inevitable that all good stories must come to an end; ours being no exception. We were served eviction papers just a couple weeks before Christmas, and scrambled to figure out where to move our operation. And it’s not like we could just bring a moving van up and take our multitudes of crap away in a single load. Instead, everything left the mountain just like it came up – one carload at a time. I crammed the Jeep full each night after work, and dropped it all off in a storage unit every morning before going to work. This worked great for all the small stuff, but then it was time to get serious about the big stuff.

It was right about then that our wonderfully dry winter turned around and decided to dump more than two inches of rain just a couple days before our departure date. So in the middle of the downpour, we led our mules on foot the two miles down the dirt road and to their new home. There were times that all four of their legs were splayed out as they slid down the road, pulling us along as though we were water skiing behind them. And once, to the credit of Mexico and Sierra, when I fell on my face under one and in front of the other, they both stopped cold and didn’t stomp me into the mud.

The next step was to stage the horse trailer for when the road dried out enough to drive. Thanks to the help of some of our young, strapping, strong-backed friends, all the furniture got loaded without too much mud included. And then we waited, and waited… and waited.

That final afternoon of D-day, we went for it. Dave took the trailer first, and I followed with the cats in a kennel on the back of the quad. He only slipped and slid a little at the top, and the rest of the road was a cake walk. I, on the other hand, had a kennel of bucking, yowling cats that I finally had to sit on to keep from falling off as we bounced down the mountain for the final time. Fitting, I think, in retrospect.

Due to the abruptness of our departure, we weren’t able to make a graceful transition to another ranch… yet. The animals all have a temporary home at a neighboring ranch with a million dollar view of the coast. And we landed in a Motel 6. Hmmm… Somehow I think we got the raw end of that deal.

So, we have become “townies” for the winter while we regroup and figure out our long-term plan. Hopefully this is only semi-retirement for Miss Jane, and we’ll find our way back to Adventureland, where I can put all the crazy, useless-in-town things I have learned to good use in Act II.

In the meantime, thank you all for your amazing support of my literary efforts! I can’t tell you how much fun I have had giving you all a good laugh from time to time.

And Now… The Rest of the Story

I am quite certain that several of you noticed that parts of my last blog post just didn’t add up. The Keystone Cop routine of rushing in blind and then retreating, the anxiety over our neighbors’ safety, the massive response by law enforcement… all for metal scrappers?

I have to admit to leaving out a key piece of information. In a word – guns.

As you may recall, I am married to a retired hunting guide, who still hunts for pleasure on a regular basis. He has quite a collection of “long guns” – rifles, shotguns, muzzle loaders – all tools of the trade.

Or, I should say, had.

Our primary concern that night was to stop the bad guys before they gained access to the storage container, which is where we store everything that doesn’t fit in the barndominium (basically, everything we own). It is actually an old cell tower site – a reinforced building surrounded by chain link and barbed wire. We are convinced that they expected to find wiring, batteries, and other assorted electronics inside. What they found instead was a completely different story.

And Dave and I are sick about it – on so many levels that I am at a loss on how to verbalize it.

As you know from previous stories, I am still coming to terms with my own comfort level with guns. I recognize the need to protect myself from mountain lions and now, apparently, meth-heads, but I still question my ability to ever raise a gun against any living thing. (Except, of course, rattle snakes.)

But now, with my own sense of security violated, I am feeling incredibly vulnerable. So it was with a desire to feel more empowered that I asked Dave for some more target practice because, while I feel comfortable enough with the .22 pistol and snake shot, I have never really shot a long gun.

And here it becomes necessary for another emotional aside. Starting the morning after the incident, neighbors have been showing up on the doorstep, quietly offering Dave the loan of a “ranch rifle.” The thoughtfulness of it, the matter-of-factness of it, has brought tears to my eyes on not a few occasions.

But we began my training with one of the rifles spared in the heist. It uses the same caliber bullet as the snake shot pistol, so the only thing I had to get used to was contorting my body around the stock to sight in targets.

And, as I polish my fingernails against my shirt collar, I batted 750 when it came to shooting tin cans off the fence.

The thing is, it took me so long to set up and sight in each target that the mountain lion would have had time to completely devour two mules and at least half of one of my own legs before I pulled off a shot. And that would only have served to piss it off even more – feeling more like a bee sting than anything else.

With that in mind, Dave took up an offer from one of the neighbors, and we borrowed a shotgun that they both swore was the perfect size and caliber for petite, little me.

Dave set me up at the pond for this practice session, wanting me to see the “scatter pattern” that the gun produced. He handed me ear plugs, which should have been my first warning, and then showed me how to stand so I wouldn’t get knocked over. He warned me it would have a lot more recoil than the rifle I had first tried, and left me with the admonishment, “So don’t be a sissy and drop the gun after you pull the trigger,” before stepping well out of the line of fire.

I firmly planted myself, locked in on a mud patch in the pond, and… Holy Crap!

To my credit, I didn’t drop the gun, nor fall on my butt.

But, I am still picking pieces of my teeth out of my tongue, and I don’t expect to be able to lift my arm over my head for a week.

As for the scatter pattern – the shells were called “dove shot.” All I can say is never mind the dove, an entire flock of geese would have been completely obliterated. I guess I can rest assured that when the bear comes through the kitchen window for the dinner leftovers, that dove shot will have sent it fleeing into the next county before I can finish picking all my molars up off the floor.

In light of our new arsenal, we needed to pick up some ammunition to go along with it. In an interesting pairing of errands, we made stops at both the gun shop and Victoria’s Secret.

So I can say with confidence that the Badass Tinkerbell is, once again, well-armed and well dressed.

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Our mountain community is quite small, and very spread out. In most cases, if you need to borrow a cup of sugar you’re looking at a two-mile trek at the very least.

So our main connection to one another tends to happen while driving the main road. Our two mile ride to the ranch may take up to an hour as we stop to visit with the neighbors we cross paths with, catching up on the latest news and gossip.

And, let me tell you, you don’t need cell phones, Blackberries, or instant messaging when you have the mountain hotline! News travels faster than lightening, although the accuracy of the information tends to lose a little in the translation. Remember the tin can “telephones” connected by a piece of string from your childhood?

As an example, if I were to greet a neighbor at the top of the mountain and mention in passing that I saw a bear the previous evening, by the time I get to the bottom I’ll be asked by another neighbor about the monster bear that Dave shot last night and the two cubs that I’m now hand-raising.

So as I started encountering neighbors on my commute home one evening who tossed out comments like, “I’m so sorry about the robbery!” and “I heard they got everything!”, I was not overly concerned, recognizing there must be some distortion to the story. I had, after all, just talked to Dave fifteen minutes previously and nothing had sounded amiss.

As it turned out, Dave had discovered earlier in the day that thieves had targeted a storage area on the property. Over dinner, he explained that they had mostly taken things that could be sold as scrap metal: water pumps, shovels, ladders, batteries. They had also tried, but failed, to access our storage container.

He had gone to the local police department to report the crime, but more importantly, to let them know about our remote location and find out about response times, as he was convinced they would be back for what they could get out of the storage container.

Long story short, he was told to contact the County as it was out of their jurisdiction, they were too short-staffed, and we lived too far away.

Message received.

As we finished dinner, we discussed the type of shady character that would pull such a heist and his plan to visit the County the following day, and then he walked outside. Only to come racing back in.

“I can hear them! They’re breaking in right now! Let’s go!”

For the next part of this story, you should be imagining something akin to the Keystone Cops meet the Dukes of Hazzard.

We charged up the hill towards the storage unit, adrenaline pumping, stopping just below to make our presence known.

And this is where the Keystone Cops come into play. We hadn’t thought through any action plan, and suddenly found ourselves in a Mexican standoff. We knew they were there, they knew we knew they were there, but now what?!

Call for backup!

But, Oh crap! No cell service.

Retreat to regroup!

We raced back down to the olive grove where Dave ducked behind a tree near the main road to keep watch while I ran back to the house, where my phone actually works. Then it was a matter of running back and forth through the grove, alternating making calls with updating Dave on who was coming.

Which is where the Dukes of Hazzard come into play. Within ten or fifteen minutes, the neighbors started showing up from all directions, most half-cocked (and a couple of them, half-crocked). As the bad guys saw all the lights converging, they decided to run for it, one on foot uphill, and the other in a truck downhill.

What followed was what you would expect from any great chase scene – high speed pursuits, cars catching air, trucks blasting through locked metal gates. The only thing missing (thank God!) was a gun battle.

Enter the professionals. You should now shift your mental picture to one of the final scenes in the movie The Blues Brothers, where 152 police cars chase Jake and Elwood all over creation.

There were lines of squad cars hitting dead ends on the dirt roads, only to have to wait as, one by one, they reversed out and attempted to turn around without driving off a cliff in the dark. There were broken down vehicles; radiators blown on the steep, rough terrain.

And the climax came as 27 shotguns were whipped out and trained on my husband and a neighbor, who in an unfortunate coincidence drives a truck with a similar description to the suspect’s vehicle.

Okay, maybe it was only 2 or 3 shotguns, but it was enough to send me streaking through the olive grove, shrieking at the 911 dispatcher, “Tell them not to shoot! Tell them not to shoot!”

**********

It’s time for me to put all kidding aside. This was a heavy, emotionally charged night that I’m still really trying to find humor in. Dave and I are still second guessing ourselves about involving the neighbors, especially in light of the 911 response that we actually got. And I agonized over every call I made, knowing that we might be putting each of them directly in harm’s way.

But our neighbors are rock-stars. To a person, they instantly dropped everything and came to our aid without hesitation, which we will never forget and forever appreciate. In fact, a few are genuinely angry with us that they weren’t called. And it was largely through their actions that we ended up with the outcome that we did.

And in all seriousness, the Sheriff’s show of force was swift, impressive, and incredibly professional. They brought in a K-9 unit and helicopter to track the suspect on foot, and a forensics unit was here until 4:30 am processing evidence.

And recognizing the value of local knowledge, within seconds after being caught in the crosshairs of their shotguns, our neighbor was already riding shotgun in a squad car, acting as navigator on the backcountry roads. And Dave was helping them make sense of the chaos at the crime scene.

The final outcome? Armed with the information our neighbors collected before the law arrived, the first suspect was arrested in less than 24 hours. And they nabbed the second within 48 hours. Deputies have been up every day since to build their case, collecting more evidence, witness statements, and lists of stolen property. They should be able to charge each of these rat bastards with at least one, if not two, felony counts.

Let’s hear it for the good guys!

**********

As for all of us involved, we remained on high alert for a few days afterwards. So we all got riled up when, the following day, rumors started filtering in through the mountain grapevine that the suspect on foot had held out until daybreak and then called a buddy, who had the audacity to drive up and pick him up. But, according to the rumor, a neighbor had chased them down and actually caught them!

High fives all around, and score one for mountain justice!

Or, maybe, we need a new tin can on one end of our mountain communication system.

The true story is almost better. As a neighbor left the mountain mid-morning, he came across a car he didn’t recognize, who refused to stop when he flagged them down. So he threw his car in reverse and chased them – backwards – up the mountain, and straight into a Deputy Sheriff who had been up collecting evidence.

Unfortunately, I’m afraid that the elderly couple who was just coming up the mountain to visit their son will be traumatized for life.

Bear Hunting, Revisited

We have noticed a strong correlation between the ripeness of avocados and the amount of bear activity around the ranch. A couple weeks ago, we started seeing lots of traffic around one particular trail, so motivation was high to work a bear hunt into the next fogless evening.

The perfect evening presented itself last night, so we loaded up the Jeep and headed out. I jumped out to open the gate when we got to it, but then stopped for several moments trying to figure out what was wrong with it. I finally pieced together that a bicyclist had punched through one end of it before I unlocked it and we moved on.

We were about 45 seconds down the road before I realized I had a problem. Apparently, I had chosen to stand directly over a red ant nest while I played CSI, and they had just found their way up my boots and into my socks.

As they began biting, I started shrieking, quickly ripping off my boots… and socks… then pants.

After initially being quite startled, Dave was now laughing so hard that he was finding it difficult to drive, all the while cracking jokes at my expense.

By the time we arrived at the trailhead, the drama was over. While I was determined not to waste a perfectly beautiful night, I was also not so keen to put back on my ant-infested clothes. So I gamely shook out my boots and threw them back on, grabbed my binoculars, and walked out onto the ridge to scout the orchards below.

And instantly Dave coined the new phrase “bare hunting.” Of course, he was the only one lucky enough to see anything of interest.

Water Is Highly Overrated

   When the owners bought the ranch back in the 70’s, they trenched in a water system using PVC pipe that traverses a good 100 acres of the property. Over the years, lines were added or capped as projects and buildings appeared and disappeared.

   So we inherited the job of maintaining a maze of 40-year-old plastic pipe with no map of where the pipes actually lay. When we first moved in, the system wasn’t working at all, and our first order of business was to sink a new well pump and repair all the breaks.

   As a newcomer to ranch life, this was obviously not my area of expertise, but Dave was keen to start my education right away, recognizing I’d be on my own a lot.

   Which is, of course, how it’s worked out. EVERY TIME a waterline breaks, Dave’s away at work. And considering the age of the system and the randomness of its placement, it happens more than you’d think.

   When the water tanks are full, a break has the potential for a 10,000 gallon water loss, so the goal is to catch it quickly and get the tank valves shut off. This entails a half-mile run up the mountain. Then it’s a mile run from there down the mountain to the well site to shut off the pump, wait for the pipes to drain, dry, dig up the break site, and repair the pipe.

   Fairly laborious, but straightforward, right?

   Riight…

   The first time it happened, the ground at the break site was so impacted we had to call in a tractor to dig it up, and by then Dave was home to deal with it.

   The second time, it took me three days just to locate the break. I got all the parts together and worked with Dave via phone to make sure I did the repair correctly. I have to admit to being fairly proud of myself when it all held together and we were back on line.

   Until an hour later.

   The break was at an abandoned project site, and was just a capped pipe. The water pressure against the new cap was just too much and it blew right off.

   Quick! Run to the tanks, then to the well, let the pipes drain, dry, and try again.

   Dave’s advice this time was to drive a stake in front of the cap to help work against the water pressure, and wait twice as long for the cement to dry before turning the water back on.

   Okay… seems… to… be… holding… NOOO!

   Run to the tank, now to the well, etc., etc.

   This time he counseled me to go to town and buy industrial strength cement, and wait overnight for it to set. Done!

   Phew!

   So by the time this latest episode rolled around, I felt like a pro. With plenty of experience under my belt, there was no break I couldn’t handle.

   Famous last words.

   This break was the main line to the barn, and it butted right up to a cement footing supporting a six by six beam. Attached to the beam was the electrical box for the whole ranch system, and buried directly over the broken pipe was a buried Edison box.

   Are you kidding me? Who’s brain wave was this?!

   I spent all morning digging out the cement footing, expecting to be electrocuted at any moment. It’s summertime, I’m sweaty, getting devoured by bugs, and you remember the mud, right? Thick, viscous, cement that sticks to everything. Because of all the wires and conduit pipes, I spent a lot of time on my knees or belly, digging cautiously by hand.

   Can you picture how pretty I’m looking about now?

   It was at this point that I started thinking that water is highly overrated.

   But I finally uncovered the pipe, and determined there was about a four inch window in which to make the repair. Now, for the parts.

   Because of another restructuring on the ranch, our tool shed was gone, and despite an hour-long search, I couldn’t find a hacksaw or the pipe cement anywhere.

   Sigh…

   The only thing I had going for me was that this was a slow leak, so I could still turn on the tanks long enough to take a shower before heading to town for parts.

   Just as I was getting ready to leave, the cavalry appeared. I think Dave recognized the desperation in my voice and called a neighbor, who showed up with a power saw and cement to finish the project for me.

   Can’t wait to see what the water gremlins throw at me next…

This Means War…

I came home from a weekend away to discover that mice had moved into the kitchen during my absence. I missed the first significant clue because I had a bag of fly predators on the counter, and thought the droppings were eggs that had fallen out of the bag.

I guess maybe an unrelated sidebar is necessary here… When you live on a ranch in the mountains, with a stagnating pond and several manure-producing mules, flies are a serious issue in warm weather. Every month, a company sends us a bag of fly predator eggs. Once they start to hatch, I release them in the manure piles in an attempt to curb our summer swarms. I leave them on the kitchen counter so I can keep track of their hatch, because if I miss it, they drill out of the bag and create a mess.

Which is what I thought might have happened that morning. There were no holes in the bag, but I still didn’t put two and two together. (Maybe I need to take a course in scatology? I seem to keep misidentifying animals based on their poop!)

When I got home for work, the counter was COVERED. It must have been some party. And sure enough, when I opened the pantry cabinet, there was food and droppings everywhere. And in the cooking utensil drawer, a nest.

SIGH.

My first thought was to bring in Bobcat to take care of it for me. The problem with this is that the cats are not allowed in the house, so when they do come inside, they are nervous. I put her right in the drawer with the nest, but she immediately jumped out and ran to Blue’s pillow. Stupid cat is really smart. She has watched the dog come into the house every night and go straight to the pillow to sleep, so she clearly equated it with an “animal safety zone,” kind of like free-base in a kid’s game of hide-and-seek. She wouldn’t leave it to hunt for me.

Strike one.

It was already 10pm, and the mouse traps were in our storage shed, a quarter mile and three locked gates away. I decided to wait until morning to deal with it, and sat down to watch some news. Only to jump up again less than three minutes later when a mouse popped out of the wood stove next to me and ran across the floor.

I had been wondering how the damn thing got in the house in the first place, and would never have figured on this. My new roommate was channeling Santa Claus, coming in from the barn roof by shimmying down the inside of the stove pipe. From there, full-on Parkour free running style, it tumbled across the floor, somersaulted up the broom handle, and back-flipped onto the countertop.

Okay, maybe some of that was my wine-induced imagination, but still!

There was no avoiding it, so off to storage I went. I armed the traps with peanut butter and went to bed.

The next morning brought no resolution. It had completely ignored my offering, and instead dragged off one of the rattlesnake tails from the windowsill. (If you have already accepted the existence of fly predators on the kitchen counter, you have no right to start judging me now!)

Strike two.

Clearly, the mouse expected hard-core protein to sustain its massive quantities of output on the kitchen counters. So the next night, I added a piece of dog food to the top of the peanut butter.

The next morning, it was more challenging to piece together what had happened. It appears the mouse had catapulted itself into a hanging basket, where it ate into a bag of BLT dip mix (bacon bits all over the counter), and then it lowered itself over the mouse trap like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible and removed the dog food from the peanut butter without disarming the trap.

Strike three.

THIS MEANS WAR…

The Animals Are Winning!

            The ranch we caretake is 320 acres in the middle of a National Forest. You would think that with all that open space, the wildlife would be content to concede our happy little barndominium, plus its yard. Really, it only encompasses maybe 900 square feet total! But, no, our little compound acts as a magnet instead.

Barely three weeks after we moved in, we started discovering bees in the house. A queen had set up quick residence in the bedroom wall, and the drones found their way between the wall and the floorboards, where they would crash against the window until they died. One evening I came home from work to find more than 40 carcasses on the floor in front of the window. Just recently, they came back to roost in the water heater closet, and I am considering harvesting the honey to pay for the damage they are causing.

            This is in addition to the various beetles, crickets, and spiders I constantly chase back outside. Not to mention the ants – there is a constant stream across the kitchen counters. I’ve tried everything to get rid of them, and once even thought I’d succeeded. Until I realized they’d gone “underground” into the cabinets. By finding them floating in the bottom of my bowl of Cheerios…

            Even the posse wreaks havoc. One night, I suddenly smelled the overwhelming musk of a skunk. As I ran to shut the door, the dog came running at me. Thinking to keep her from getting sprayed, I pulled her into the house, only to realize fairly quickly that she had already been hit, and now the skunk oil was in the house too. Everyone recommended a local product for the walls, the dog bed, and the dog. Unfortunately, all it did was make it smell like the skunk had been eating peppermint candies.

            The mules, too, are constantly pushing the boundaries, reaching over the fence to grab roses, raspberries, and as much of the lawn as possible. The other huge frustration I have with them is that, despite having all this acreage in which to choose a litter box, they have decided that just outside the kitchen window is the perfect place to deposit their “road apples.”

            Now I recognize that we have chosen to live in a wilderness, and that good comes with the bad. I accept that in order to see a doe and her two fawns, a bear in the avocados, or a bobcat hunting ducks in the pond, I have to put up with the ants, mosquitoes and flies. And any one of these things is tolerable when it stands alone. But sometimes, enough is too much.

            I came home exhausted from a long day at work, and Blue-dog is dancing for her dinner, Big Max is meowing for non-attention, there is honey pouring out of the hot water heater, but I just need a couple minutes for myself first. I walk in to the smell of peppermint skunk, look out the kitchen window and sure enough there are piles of road apples everywhere, start to clean the line of ants off the counter yet again, and crack! – there goes the fence as the mules rush the lush, green lawn …

           I just lost it, running out of the house shrieking at all of them.

           I can’t take it anymore! The animals are winning!