A Letter from the Ozarks? I thought he died.

August hit hard at the end of May and bypassed June completely so by July when it was suppose to be just starting to get hot, the grassy pastures were already brown and California crispy. The worst drought here in a long while, breaking record after record after record like that church group did to all those Beatle albums after John Lennon said something that ticked them off.

Fewer and fewer people are willing to say what’s normal and what’s not concerning seasonal weather. I think we’re all getting tired of hearing ourselves talk about what was. Besides, whose got the energy to talk when it’s this hot?  I’ve been told that the reason so many folks here speak in a slow drawl is because of the heat. If that’s so and we keep breaking records, it won’t be long before nobody will be able to understand anybody.

Whenever I hear a scientific alarmist on TV pitching “global warming/climate change” as something we need to throw money at, I see a desperate man begging for funding so he won’t lose his job. I can’t imagine the prehistoric man throwing spears at a glacier that formed in the mountain pass blocking his best passage to the other side. I’m pretty sure they just lived with it and found a different and perhaps better route. It seems that every other generation has stories about weather we don’t have today, more rain, more snow, longer winters, and dryer summers, whatever. Like the old guy who must have lived in an M.C. Escher drawing because he walked to school up hill in both directions trudging through three feet of snow!

When I was in high school in the early 70’s scientists had the data in front of them that suggested we were headed toward global cooling. No doubt the weather patterns are changing, yet they never stopped changing even from eons before the first people lived under the bluffs here. Not to worry, the weather is not going to take us out; there are so many other assorted flavors that can kill us. In fact, in as little as one hundred and twenty years from now, no one living today will even be here. So maybe it’s better not to get so taken up in “trendy” issues and instead look at the big picture; the mountain pass that glacier had blocked for so long is now finally clear!

So in the tradition of good story telling I plan on telling my great grandkids that back in my day it was so hot (How hot was it?) that it was common for people to spontaneously combust into flames while they were hoeing weeds in their garden. Children would go off to school never to return again. Later they would find little piles of ashes at the bus stop. I’m sure I can do better but that’s just my first draft.

Last week I went out to the coop to shut the chicken’s in for the night and found a Black Rat Snake in one of the nesting boxes with an egg half way in its mouth. I turned around and went back into the house for a bucket with a lid and by the time I returned, the egg was a couple inches down its neck past its head. I grabbed it by the head and felt that the egg was not yet crushed so I reached below the egg and started squeezing it back up towards its head. The reptile was a little stubborn and wouldn’t open its mouth but with continued pressure I convinced it to give me back my egg. It was covered with mucus slim but I got it back! I don’t like killing black snakes if I can help it  because they kill poisoness Copperhead Snakes and keep the mice population down. So I put him in the bucket and the next day took him a mile down the road to let him go. That snake sat in the bucket all night long so when I finally opened the lid it sprang out like a fake snake from a gag can and nearly hit me in the face. I was so surprised that I dropped the bucket and just about fell backwards. That snake took off in the weeds and pretty much had enough of me but ended up getting the last laugh. Hopefully from now on it will make an honest living eating mice and going midevil on Copperheads.

A couple nights ago around midnight racoons started flash mobbing my pear tree so I jumped out of bed, grabbed my flashlight, shotgun ( w/extra shells) and went after them. It was carnage!! The body count stacked up as I put the whole family out of business. Wildman wearing only flip-flops and a shotgun, VERY primal!!! At the end I felt like raising my gun in the air and letting out a war cry…. I didn’t though. I went back to bed scratching my bug bites. The next morning the buzzards were on it early doing the hazmat clean up. Buzzards are good birds and are very respectful of the living and extremly helpful in taking care of the dead. Nothing goes to waste, it’s the circle of life.

When you live in the city where things are in a sterile and protected environment, you can afford to develop romantic ideas about being one with nature. There you can frolic on established city hiking trails in nearby parks with binoculars and bird book in hand getting in touch with your inner Indian. There is no need to carry a sidearm because the dangerous animals have long ago been slaughtered and hauled away. But when you live in real nature the rules change. Here when you have farm animals, gardens and fruit trees you must add a new word to your vocabulary that sometimes overrides those poetic notions about flora and fauna. The word is vigilance. Without it, raccoons, bobcats, foxes, possums, snakes and even mountain lions, bears and more, you name it, will take and devour what you’ve worked hard to establish. You do what you can with fencing, live traps and dogs but sometimes you need to administer a bullet suppository to stop the aggressors. Every night there is a constant possibility and one must be vigilant, because that’s when the zombies come out!

We finally did get rain this week and with it the bug population exploded overnight. The bugs here are something I don’t think anybody moving from the western states ever gets use to. If it’s not the ticks and chiggers when walking around in the day it’s the bugs at night that really get the party going. Like I said, the zombies come out! At night while in bed with my reading lamp on, little bugs of every known variety cover the window looking for a way in while the bigger ones get a running start and bash into the windows and walls with such force it sounds like large hail assaulting the house. It only stops when I finally turn out the light. And God help you when you open a glass door at night with a well-lit interior. They come rushing in like it was black Friday at Walmart!

Mercy…. We came here to get away from it ALL but found that it’s ALL here.

If you get bored living out here then it’s your own fault.