Life At The New House

As many of my readers are aware, my wife and I bought a new house and had been spending some time getting the place to move in. Well…we’re in there now. It has been an interesting time so far and the place has already shown itself to be a strange and exciting place.

Please don't tell my wife how high up I was when I took this picture. Thanks.

For the record...he tasted awesome.

One of the first things we discovered was the beaver skull. Logically, my first concern was that by taking this skull I had disturbed an ancient beaver burial ground and that I would forever after be haunted by ghost beavers and their gnawing damnations. Turns out their plan of retribution was instead to just attack my dogs. A few days ago I had let the dogs outs and then after a few moments I went to see what the commotion was. The two dogs had found a beaver. Walter was simply spinning on the spot and barking excitedly but poor Corbin was trying to sniff the thing…and this can be tough when about 30lbs of rodent does not wish to be sniffed and would instead prefer lunging at your face repeatedly. They also occasionally knock trees down across my driveway. Bastards. I’m not giving them back their skull.

Our yard is now littered with bird feeders. So far we have seen Blackbirds (Red-winged), Cardinals, Chickadees (Black-capped), Cowbirds, Crows, Doves (Mourning), Goldfinches, Grackles, Blue Jays, Dark-eyed Junco, White-breasted Nuthatches, Robins, Song Sparrows, Wild Turkeys, Woodpeckers (Downy, Hairy, Pileated) and Northern Flickers (Yellow Shafted). This is quite nice and relaxing to watch. Less relaxing is when you open the door of your wood stove and there is a red winged blackbird staring out at you.

There was a bird in my stove. After I put the dogs upstairs I returned to the stove and considered my next move. I started by grabbing a box and returning to the stove. Yeah…that didn’t work. Each of my attempts to snag the bird with the box was thwarted by the bird looking at me smugly and calmly stepping to the side. My next tactic involved grabbing a shirt. I would use the shirt to trap the bird and put him back outside.  So…with a shirt in hand I took another shot at bird wrangling. Fed up with my shenanigans the bird jumped out of the stove and started running across the floor. I followed him until he ran under the bookcase. I moved the bookcase and then remembered the whole under the bookcase. The whole that led to the space that ran under the floorboards. The bird had found it though. The next few minutes were spent filled with clanging noises as the bird ran around and clanged off of vents and occasional appearances of a beak through various gaps in the floor. The ceiling of the basement is a drop one so when I went downstairs I was able to just lift a tile to see if I could see the bird. I could…he was staring at me. Then he turned and ran. There was more clanging. Finally I was able to get him cornered and he jumped out of the ceiling and moved down to the floor. After a few moments of running around the room he jumped up to the window and stood there looking outside. Fortunately, this window has no screen so I was able to slide it open and he was left open to the world. Which he didn’t feel like entering again. I ended up poking him in the back until finally he gave me a dirty look and flew away.

One of the nicest features of the property is the pond. It is home to many nice fishes, all of which like to be fed…

YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM ME!!!

it is now also home to a couple of turtles. Twice now while driving home I’ve stopped to move turtles off of the road (it is a compulsion…I’ve also stopped to move turtles…don’t judge me). Instead of just moving off them to the ditch though I’ve brought them home and put them in the pond. My plan is to eventually breed an army of turtles and use them to re-enact the first four levels of Super Mario Bros.

The wildlife has been interesting enough around the house but I figured that I would start exploring the rest of the land. I started hiking through the wetlands behind the house. I found interesting trails, duck nests, evidence of more beavers…and a van.

I can't wait to show this van to Hurly.

50% of all nightmares are generated here. True fact.

Yup…in the middle of the marshy forest behind my house is a van. A van filled with tires, batteries, a vehicle’s gas tank, animal droppings ,and (though I didn’t see it) the bodies of at least two drifters. Weird huh? This wasn’t all there was back there though. I also found stacks of logs like the one that were used in the construction of this house, pile of bricks, and old cart and wagon, two giant gas tanks and what appears to be a decades old piece of machinery. I can’t wait to see what I find next month.

Just in case you missed the horrifying words printed on the face of that machine