Mud
September 30, 2008
Sorry I haven’t posted much lately, but if I’m not out canvassing, I’m repairing the plaster walls upstairs in the shack next door. I don’t know why they only used a scratch coat. It could be the house was built during, or shortly after the panic of 1873, because it does roughly correspond to that period. In my humble architectural opinion, they should have pitched a tent and waited till they could afford to accumulate more sticks and rocks.
Maybe I’m just grousing because the place currently reeks of squirrel piss. I’m hoping that will diminish when I replace the rotted sleepers with hewn cedar beams; but then again, it will probably just smell like someone’s squirrel cage.
plaster dislodged by moisture and SQUIRRELS
another view of SQUIRREL damage
At any rate, I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks breathing dust from drywall joint compound while we watch the new great depression take hold like a case of clap.
First!
Wow, that’s some nose you’ve got if you’re sure it’s squirrel and not, say, bat or something. I’m impressed. As for the new great depression, I spent my childhood terrified of another depression after hearing stories my mother told. Plus, the fashions are so awful and we’d have to go back to black-and-white pictures.
Sue: I’ve seen more squirrels there than bats, but I have to say it’s just a hunch.
I don’t know where the bats sleep around here, but we’ve got them by the hundreds-I suspect most of them sleep in dead Virginia pine trees, and there are a few shallow caves near open springs.
I’ve never seen any in any of the outbuildings.
I also heard the previous owners of the place had a problem with hunters trespassing onto the place and breaking into the buildings to sleep or still-hunt. I only hope it’s not some of those sorry bastards that pissed in the shack.
Still-hunt?
Most deer hunting down here is done from the right of way on rural roads. The hunters will release a few Walker hounds with radio transmitters on their backs and then drive their truck to the appropriate spot to sit and drink or play grapplefinger with their buddies until the deer run past so they can “harvest” them near the truck.
Still-hunters will climb a tree and sit in a tree stand, or sit in a blind, or a vacant building.
I’m not opposed to hunting, mostly because deer populations have swelled in the absence of natural predators, but the majority of hunting I’ve seen is done by fat, childish men, and it’s for trophies as opposed to food. I’ve witnessed firsthand acts of sheer idiocy where by all rights the state should intervene to disarm a freak in the throes of bloodlust, and I’m sick to death they’ll never enact such laws.
At my former residence, I was out raking leaves in the yard when a doe ran across the yard. There was a bit of intestine showing through her abdominal wall about the size of a thumb, and near her haunch. It wasn’t doe day, so in addition to being an incompetent shot, the hunter was knowingly breaking the law. My next door neighbor ran huffing up a few minutes later and asked me if I’d seen the deer. I hated the stupid bastard, but I helped him chase the gutshot deer hoping to put it out of its misery. We crossed the open field directly in front of my house for about a hundred and fifty yards and then entered a woodlot. We hadn’t gone twenty yards when I started to hear a zipping sound, followed quickly by the reports of the guns firing in our direction from the side of the next highway over. I flattened and listened to about 8-12 shots being fired. My neighbor was pretty old, and he was too confused to take cover. He just stood there trying to catch his breath. Fortunately for him, he didn’t get hit, even when he started yelling “Stop that fuckin’ shootin’. It’s me!” With that, I hugged the ground a little closer thinking that one of his buddies might sense an opportunity.
That’s just one of my hunting stories. I have another couple that nearly tempt me to stay indoors altogether during deer season.