No I don't mean heaven and will go even further - some days it might have been the home from the other direction. I will share just a few incidents that were new experiences for me and my cubs.
The first occurred the first ten days of residence there. One night our dog started barking and I went to the window and saw two guys walking from the ranger station down the drive to our home. Since there were forest fires going and I knew none of the patron's crew, I just figured they were reporting in to see if they were needed. About this time our dog stopped barking (guess you would to if you had just been hit in the head with a pistol) Another reason for me to think they were workers. It was about 10 pm so the cubs were in bed. I opened the door and since there was no storm or screen door they were right there in my face. Imagine my surprise when one said as he aimed the gun at me, "Just step back lady". I did but slammed the door in the process (right in their face). I swear to this day that my angel locked the door, anyway, I stood watching the knob turn but to no avail. I had gotten a pistol out of the hall closet and had it aimed straight at the door and surprisingly to me I was totally ready to use it if they had gotten the door open.
The next episode involved the cubs and a wounded bear. Now these cubs were "forest smart" and that is probably what saved them. We had been told to watch out for a wounded bear but never thought they meant in our back yard. Anyway, I am standing at the kitchen window looking out to check on the cubs and see them backing down the mountain and sure enough a few feet behind them is a bear. If they had started to run the bear would have caught them. Anyway, I yelled for their Dad to get his rifle and when he got outside with the gun, he stood on the picnic table and shot the bear. When the bear fell it landed on the retaining wall just a few feet from our back door.
One day the cubs were playing on the mountain behind the house and one of them came in with a hurt foot. If they had told me that they jumped off the roof of a summer home I would have known that there was the possibility of a broken foot!!! Anyway, several hours went by before we took the cub to the ER and sure enough his heel was broken.
Another occurrence happened during dinner one night when we had guests. All of a sudden our front door opened and in ran this hysterical lady carrying an unconscious baby that was already turning blue. She could not speak English. The Patron and his assistant immediately started CPR while I called the fire department to bring oxygen. We had to physically hold the lady while they revived the baby. Don't remember if we ever finished eating but the baby was okay.
About 2 am one morning our door bell rang and when I opened the door I encountered a very irate man with his wife and kids in the car behind him and they were all very angry and "vocal". He proceeded to tell me that he would never be back to camp again. It seems the bears had come into their tent while they were sleeping to get their food. Now there are very large signs up everywhere warning campers not to put food in their tents. Duh
Another day, this man came to the door covered in grease (he had been working on his car). He demanded the use of the bathroom to wash up. I showed him the ranger station and said they have a public restroom. He angrily stated, "This is a government house and I pay taxes" NOT a smart move on his part. I replied, "Yes and I pay rent, if you want your filthy hands washed go over to the station" and firmly shut the door.
During the winter months our back yard was covered so deep with snow that we could barely get out the back door. One of the cubs and I discovered a valuable use for that snow. It covered up items kicked out of the house like dryers that you have to kick to start. It didn't show the white mice either.
Well, I have borrowed your eyes long enough. Have a great day (if you want to).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
You're a brave Lady Marbella(!) And it is amazing how hard a white mouse is to find in white, foot deep snow isn't it?!! Much harder than when they are running across the living room or hiding under ger-beans bed with all the crumbs.
Here's a little snippet about a couple more adventures there you may not have known about :-) From my "offline" journal...
The Forest Service supply depot, which you are already familiar with, was somewhat less than 1/2 a mile up a fairly steep hill behind our house. The hill made for excellent sledding in the winter, provided you could steer through the trees. Santa had given us some perfect sleds for this, triangular and metal. And after a few slow runs to pack down the snow, things could get pretty zippy. You could steer them by shifting your weight slightly from side to side. Across the highway from us was an Inn where tourists would come in the winter. They had a pretty lame hill there with only a couple of trees and it was always entertaining to watch the tourists slide down this baby hill in their little circular plastic sleds that the Inn sold. Since they were totally unmaneuverable, it would usually only take about 10 minutes before somebody smacked into a tree. We, of course, found much more creative ways to smack into trees.
One summer a set of shiny new trash cans showed up in the depot. They were there for distribution to camp grounds later, and we discovered them unguarded for several days. After trying various geometrical arrangements we finally struck upon the idea of crawling inside them and rolling down the hill. Of course there was no way to steer them and the faster you got going the harder you would hit the eventual tree. And hitting the eventual tree was an inevitable conclusion. I'm not sure why this was so fun at the time, perhaps it was the dream of rolling all the way down to the house triumphantly untouched, but I do remember lying sprawled out for several minutes, several times, recovering after building up so much speed that you knew it was going to be really really bad when you met that tree with your name on it. I'm sure the Forest service was curious when they picked up their shiny new trash cans, most of which now had large dents and strange deformities. I'm pretty sure they had no clue what actually transpired. Somethings are just beyond the adult imagination.
But imagination is a fickle guide. Case in point, another exciting discovery at the depot: flares. These were way cool, they looked like sticks of dynamite, which would have been even more fun, but I could settle for fire. I ran off into the woods further up from the depot and found nice clearing with a rock. Not as easy as it sounds in an old growth forest which was mostly pine-needle bedding. I struck the flare on the rock and ran around for a while pretending I was an Olympic torch carrier, watching the trails of flame if I swished it really fast. And then it start burning down close to my hand and getting a bit hot so I stubbed it into the ground to put it out. Well, you probably already knew this, but it came as a shock to me, that you can't really put a flare out like that. So after stomping out the fire it made in the pine-needles, a very sick feeling started too grow in my stomach. I was going to have to drop it or fry my hand and if I dropped it, it struck me that my Dad, the Forest Ranger, might have a bit of trouble explaining how his son started a forest fire that, given the proximity would, besides burning acres of forest, also burn down the forest station that was down the hill, and likely our house as well. My life flashed before my eyes. I'd finally get to join the circus like I dreamed of. I barely made it back to the depot, with blisters forming on my thumb and forefinger, searching frantically for something nonflammable and finally found an old pail with some month old rainwater in it and doused it. The next 30 minutes I spent in the backyard running hose water over my hand and decided that flares weren't all that much fun after all.
So THATS what happened to those white mice!
Those were days full of adventure. I still remember that bluish baby...thats when i first learned about leaky exhausts and carbon monoxide poisoning.
(and that cub might have kept the 'jump off the house' quiet cause it was forbidden to be over there?)..LOL..sometimes suffering in silence is the least painful route.
Post a Comment