Mishaps in the Wilderness

Wow. Where do I start? What about with what happened about 15 minutes ago? So I am feeling a bit burnt out and making it a lazy morning--don't worry I still have at least 10 hours of sunlight to finish my field work. So I'm sitting on the couch, cruising the internet and all of a sudden I hear a "shuffle shuffle, flap flap, clunk clunk clunk" in the chimney of the wood burning stove. Now I know that some of you may not have or know much about a wood burning oven, but it's what keeps houses warm out here. The chimney is about a foot wide that leads to the roof and the oven is about 2 feet wide by 2.5 feet tall. It is currently closed. So it was just my luck that a heard an animal fall down the chimney into the oven portion. Not knowing if I would find a bird, rat, bat, or other critter I went over and opened it. This large blackbird flew right out at me--I ducked and then it just flew all over the house! Running into every window. It was a chaotic mess to get it out of the house. Holy cow! I think I just had a heart attack!

Disclaimer: this may produce a disturbing image. Other critters...it's tick season out here. Every day I take a shower after returning from the field and tell my technician to do the same so we don't drag in any unwanted guests. Even after taking all precautions I woke up yesterday with a tick stuck in my belly button. That's right. I wasn't aware that it was a tick. So I started picking at it, thinking it was a scab. Then I thought, why would I have a scab in there? EW! I thought. It's a damn tick....let's just say that the tweezers were needed to get the sucker out.

Now I just went outside to water my garlic. And why am I planting only garlic this season? Because it seems to be the only plant that the birds, grounds squirrels, rats, and mice will not eat. Last year I tried to plant tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, etc. Well between the animals and a frost on June 26th, nothing fared too well. So this year, it's garlic only. Now let me explain. There are animals out here commonly referred to as "pot guts." Technically they are ground squirrels, but they are basically big rats with bushy tails and look a bit different than your typical squirrel. Out near my garden there are 3 pipes that go a couple feet down into the ground and are for my water valves. Last year, I was angry at the ground squirrels for eating my plants, so when they would fall into these pipes, I wouldn't help them get out, but I didn't want to see them die so I'd throw in pine cones and vegetation to keep them alive--(cruel and unusual, you can determine for yourself....but I somehow felt like this was less cruel than letting them die, and lord knows I wasn't about to stick my arm down in there to get bitten by the critters). So Leighton came out one weekend and I showed them to him...he has a bigger heart than myself, because he found a large branch and put it down in there so they could escape when I wasn't looking. The next day they were back to eating my plants!
Well, just now I went outside to water the garlic and 2 of them are down in the pipe. Dead. I checked it just yesterday. They must have died overnight. At least last year I kept them alive until the end of gardening season...this year I didn't even have a chance...now I have to watch their bodies get eaten by whatever else goes down in there---maybe the dumb blackbird will find its way in...

And lets not even get started on the fact that the snakes are coming back out...