Don't Tread On Me

So far this year I have seen five very large black snakes. It is just part of living here in this house in the rural country side. No escaping it. If you don't like snakes or are fearful of them, well then you aught not live where I live. Black snakes, while not all that attractive, do serve a purpose. They eat mice and small nesting birds. Where I live I have an abundance of mice. Whether it be mice who live in the field, those hanging out at the dog pen mooching the dog food or those that are finding their way into the house. 

The other day I came home and there on my lawn was a phantom snake, a very long snake skin, complete and translucent. Hmmm, I thought to myself...where is the snake. Hopefully not in my house.  The skin had my dogs, Winston and Samantha, puzzled. They stood there watching it expecting it to move. But it didn't. Samantha really made me laugh. She would get close to it and thinking it had moved would almost jump vertically off the ground. Winston on the other hand methodically circled the skin inspecting it fully with his nose.

I only saw snakes inside my house once. I remember that episode very clearly. I was in the shower and I heard a noise above the bathroom door. There I had a rectangular hole above the door for a "future" stained glass piece which would one day be backlit. I poked my head out of the shower and then I saw them. Two black snakes entwined together hanging over the doorway of the bathroom. I yelled for my dog Sam. Sam was about a year old and he came to the door and did nothing. What good are you I thought to myself. Then, butt-naked I ducked underneath the snakes and got a broom. Upon my return the snakes slithered back into the recess of my wall. Ugh. I then proceeded to duct tape plastic immediately over that hole and it has been there ever since.

I'm not sure how one can keep snakes out of an old farmhouse with all the cracks and crevices you can't see. The quarter inch space below the door, the holes in the stone foundation, the rodent tunnels leading from the yard to the crawlspace, the broken plaster holes in the wall and the clear openings under the side porch. I wonder if I went up into the attic how many skins I would see. I don't spend much time in the my cellar or my attic in the summer or fall for the likely prospect of running into a snake. I guess I try not to think about snakes inside my house all that much. For now I'll just follow that old saying, "Live and Let Live".

A.K.A. or Also Known As

My three dogs are named Ziggy, Winston and Samantha. They also have many other names by which I call them. I'm not sure how this came to be.

Zigfried is the formal name for Ziggy, who got this name because, ...well, he just looked like a Ziggy, small, cute, bouncy, and playful. And he is smart. Smart in a way you don't know until he exhibits the trait through action. He can learn quickly and understand his commands more so than the other dogs. But he is smart enough to be a trickster, faking fear, sometimes shaking his whole body to get my attention when all else fails. He lets you almost put the leash on him to take him to the pen and then suddenly jerks away darting back and forth laughing at you with his prance. Ziggy is also known as Booby, Zigman, and Ziggy-Biggy.

Winston was deliberately named after Winston Churchill. I acquired him as a puppy a month prior to running the London Marathon. So, he is a reminder and a marker for that event (or vice-versa) and no matter how senile I get I'll always remember how old he is. A larger sized dog, I believe Winston to be the dullest one of the bunch, compliant at every word and a hunter of groundhogs. He just does. In his old age he has become the fearless guard dog who is afraid of lightening. Winston is also called Win, Boy, Old Man and Winster.

Samantha Twinkletoes, so named because of the white stars on her feet, is still a youngster. At two she runs circles around all of us, literally. She truly plays with all her toys, Harry the purple Goodwill monkey whose face she ripped off, Weenie the fluorescent green dachshund-like squeeze me and I'll make a noise toy, and Thurston the honking mallard duck. But her favorite is Henry, the seemingly indestructible talking green and blue dragon puppet. Henry and Samantha have great battles on my bed and he verbally retaliates with "Take that you mutt.", "I've got you now, you tailwagger.", and "There is no getting out of this one." Samantha is also called, Boog-Boog, Booger, Boogarillo, and Samantha-Doodle.

It is a crazy thing we humans do, naming our dogs but then calling them something else. But no matter what we call them, I'm sure it is the sound of our voice which they are really responding to, fawning their love upon us.     

House For Sale

New to the area, I began looking for a house shortly after I moved to Rockbridge County. I was staying at the lovely Spring Meadows Farm, a stately southern mansion, with a long driveway entrance lined with very old trees. As a poor and new college graduate, I would drive down the driveway, imagining I was some wealthy southern bell, a Scarlett O'hara, coming home. I would almost reach the front steps of the Circa 1800 mansion, and the drive would take a sudden 90 degree turn to the left and then right. I was sudddenly jerked into reality, when I arrived at the front steps of my humble abode, the tenant house. The house, a small white framed structure, had a postage stamp yard which was fenced to keep the Charolais cows out and me in. I could peer out my bedroom window and practically touch the head of a cow. Pickle  was my landlord. He pretty much left me to my own peril there, with the possum under the house and an occasional scratching sound of a groundhog.

During my tenure at the tenant house, I searched the Lexington area for a house to purchase. I could afford a house around $60,000. Soon I was presented with houses in that price range by a local real estate agent. It was not good. I remember my agent taking me through a house in which the walls were so catywampus that I got dizzy after ten minutes and had to leave. It was clear to me that my search for a house in my price range was not going to be easy. Then one day, while doing field inspections of local water systems, I had grabbed the local newspaper to read the "houses for sale" ads. There I saw the ad

FOR SALE House, barn, log cabin,

  and shed on 3.49 acres in County for

 $39,500. Call 463-...

Immediately I called my officemate John. I said, "John, I saw this house for sale in the County. Would you meet me at the office at 4:00 o'clock and come with me to look at it?" He said, "Well, I guess so if you want me to." At 4:00 pm John and I ventured out to the eastern part of the County to see the house. We traveled down a back road with pastures on the left side. After about a mile I saw an old farm road with a grass strip and a metal grate at the entrance to keep the cattle in. We drove down the windy road until there it was, an old clapboard house, with the paint mostly worn off through the years. There were cows milling around the outside of the house's worn and weary old oak fence. Cowpies and all, John and I got out of my car and went up to the side porch and began to inspect the property.

There wasn't a single functional lock on any door and the house was pretty much open. As we walked through the kitchen, with the 100 year old, two over two window ready to fall out John says to me, "There is no kitchen." And I replied, "I don't care about that", as we passed the only item in the kitchen, a rusted yellow base cabinet with an occupied birds next in the sink. We then walked into the dining area and John said, "There is no heating system." And I said, "I don't care about that." The house had three chimneys which had a place to hook a woodstove in every room, a 6" thimble centered in the plaster below every mantel. We walked into the car-part littered and oil stained hallway and he said, "The front porch is ready to fall off." As we walked up the sturdy and well anchored stairs to the second floor, I could tell the house was rock solid, so much so it was actually built on a rock ledge. And I replied, "John, I'm buying this house."

I was overcome with excitement. I had to have this house or I was going to spontaneously combust, right there and then. I felt like how one feels when they are in the beginning of a new relationship, the anticipation, the waiting, and the learning about someone new.  Under the influence of a surge of dopamine, I fell in love...it was in fact so instant...that I began to feel dizzy and nauseous...again, but with pure joy.

I turned to John and asked him if I could borrow $3,000 as a down payment for the house. And to my surprise and without hesitation he said yes, as long as I paid him back. We left the house and ventured to downtown Lexington where John and I went to, his wife and my friend, Diana's music store. There I called the phone number in the ad and spoke to the owner of the property. I said to him that I wanted to buy the house. And he replied, "Is this a crank call?" and I said, "No. I have $3,000 to put down as a down payment to buy this house, now." And with that and the help of my friend John and his generosity, I began my love affair and at times a love-hate relationship with my home. A home with "Lot's of character and potential." And that my friends I have learned means, "Needs lots of work."

Despite all the very rough conditions of the house and the associated difficulties living here, it has been an experience of a lifetime. A journey I feel sometimes which stops and starts so often that I think I'll just never get anything accomplished. But I always remember the feeling when I first saw this house. It was like when you know what you want but you can't really describe it until you see it. I knew immediately when I creeped around the bend of the driveway it has always been what I was looking for.