Tag Archives: Wickenburg

Elk and Bison and Bears — Oh, My!

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Day 12 takes me through two national parks on my way south.

I slept better at Lynn’s house than anywhere I’d been so far. The bed was warm and cosy, the air was clean and fresh, and the sound of the creek rushing by the house was the perfect white noise for sleep.

I got up my usual time and soon realized that Lynn was awake, too. I had some coffee and Lynn had some tea and we chatted. Then I went up to take a shower while she put the horses back out to pasture.

She drove me to a town called Alder for breakfast. On the way, we stopped at a town called Laurin (which is not pronounced the way it’s spelled, but I can’t remember how to pronounce it) where Lynn showed me two small houses that had been built inside metal grain silos. She said that when she and Ray had farmed down near Klamath Falls, they’d had a bunch of those silos and never knew what to do with them — they didn’t grow grain and no one else in the area did either, anymore. This seemed to be a perfect solution.

We had egg sandwiches at a local farmer cafe and I picked up the tab. Then we went back to her place, where I packed up the car, said goodbye, and headed out.

I gassed up in Sheridan, at the only gas station. I then retraced our miles through Laurin and Alder on route 278. Along the way, I saw a bald eagle. It looked exactly like all the photos I’d seen of bald eagles, but it was picking on some road kill when I approached. It flew off to wait atop a fence post until I was gone so it could continue its meal.

I passed Nevada City along the way. My map indicates that it’s a ghost town, but there was plenty of activity there. Perhaps someone had fixed up the buildings alongside the road as a tourist attraction? Or built them from scratch to look like old western buildings? In either case, there were an awful lot of them and they were right on the road. A sign said that there would be living history events that day. A bunch of tourists had already gathered, including three motorcyclists who had found it necessary to take up a full parking spot for each of their Harleys. Ah, the good old American “I’m all that matters” attitude in action.

A few minutes later, I passed Virginia City, which has to be the most authentic western town I’ve seen so far. There were plenty of old buildings, in wonderful condition, housing shops and museums. Makes me sick to remember how Wickenburg tries to promote itself as “the west’s most western town,” when I pass through one that makes Wickenburg look like a shadowy imitation of something out of a sixties western. Somehow, the fast food joints ruin the effect.

Quake LakeI reached Ennis, which Lynn had told me was very touristy. I didn’t really notice that, but I made my turn there, so I may have missed that part of town. I was still on route 287, but it was heading southbound now. After a while, the road joined up with the Madison River, which I followed for quite some time. When I got to the turnoff for Quake Lake, I turned in. Lynn had told me a little about the place and said she’d wanted to see it when she and Ray had driven past. Ray hadn’t been interested at the time, so they’d gone past without stopping. The place was situated in a canyon where the Madison River flows. In the late 1950s, an earthquake had caused a landslide that dumped debris into the river bed. Twenty-eight people had been killed, although I don’t know how. Perhaps they were on the road there? In any case, the natural dam caused by the landslide had created Quake Lake. I read all this on the sign outside the visitor center. It was all I needed to know, so I didn’t go in. I took a picture of the little lake, then got back into the car and continued on the road as it wound alongside it. There were lots of dead trees sticking out of the water. I imagined a heavily forested canyon suddenly filled with water and the slow death of the trees that were submerged.

The road passed on the north side of Hebron Lake, a manmade lake along the Madison River. There were lots of homes on its shores, a few marinas, and some fishermen. Then, at the junction for route 191, I turned right, heading south.

My car’s odometer turned 14,000 miles about a mile outside of West Yellowstone, MT.

I was going to just drive through West Yellowstone when I spotted an IMAX theater. I enjoy IMAX movies — except the 3D ones, which look blurry to me — so I pulled in. They were showing three different movies: Yellowstone, Lewis and Clark, and Coral Reef. Although I wanted to see Lewis and Clark, Yellowstone was next up, so I bought a ticket to that. Since my cell phone finally had a decent signal, I called Mike while I waited and left him a message telling him where I was and where I was going.

The movie was good. Grand Canyon, which plays at Tusayan near the South Rim, was better, though.

YellowstoneI headed into the park, crossing over the border into Wyoming, the eighth state I’d visited so far. My National Parks pass got me in without a fee. (It works at Yellowstone but not Mt. St. Helens? What kind of bull is that?) I took the map and gave it a quick look. My objective was not to visit the park. My objective was to take a nice, scenic ride south toward Salt Lake City. The problem was, it was a Saturday in August. The park was full. And the tourists were of the most annoying variety: drive-through tourists who will stop their car anyplace someone else has stopped, just to take a picture of whatever that other person is taking a picture of. When I wanted to drive slowly, there was someone on my butt. When I wanted to drive faster, there was someone in front of me. When I wanted to stop in a place where no one else was stopped, two or three other cars immediately appeared, spewing occupants armed with cameras to take the same picture I was trying to take. At one point, I reached a traffic jam on a narrow, one-way road as at least 30 cars had stopped to photograph a grizzly bear on the other side of a creek. I was so wigged out by the crowd that I neither stopped nor saw the bear.

BisonI did see plenty of elk, though. The first herd was right inside the park, grazing along the Madison River. I guess seeing tourists have tamed them, to a certain extent, because some very gutsy tourists were approaching quite close and the elk didn’t seem to care. I also saw a few bison. Most of the bison, as I recall, are on the grassy east side of the park. I was on the west side. I saw four individual animals, each of which were the subject of many tourist photos. But the one that amazed me the most was the one walking alongside the road in a forested area. I think he was lost. But he was walking on the pavement, forcing vehicles to go around him. That, of course, caused a traffic jam because everyone wants the thrill of driving alongside a walking bison. When it was my turn to pass him, I didn’t stop. I just aimed my camera and pushed the button while I kept driving. He was so close that someone sitting in my passenger seat could have reached out and touched him. Although he didn’t seem interested in me (or anyone else), I could imagine what those horns would do to my car’s paint job if he decided he didn’t like the color red. I wondered what he thought of the long line of campers and SUVs and cars filing past him in slow motion. I also wondered where he was going. Probably to the administrative offices to complain about all the traffic and exhaust.

Old FaithfulI took the exit to the Old Faithful Inn, in search of a decent lunch. I got a great parking spot in the shade and got out with my camera. There was a huge crowd of people sitting on benches, facing the Old Faithful Geiser, which was spewing out various amounts of steam to keep them entertained. I tried two places and found a cafeteria and a buffet. I checked out the buffet and was surprised to find that the cafeteria food had looked better (although it didn’t smell better). As I was walking back to my car, Old Faithful let go and I managed to get a bunch of good photos. It was still bubbling water when I left. ChipmunkI also managed to get a photo of this little fellow. It’s unfortunate, but people at national parks find it necessary to feed the wildlife. As a result, they become tame, like this guy probably was, and they forget how to forage for themselves. In the winter, when there are fewer tourists around, they starve. That is if they don’t get sick and die from the junk the tourists feed them.

I found a restaurant with table service at the Snow Lodge. I had a nice salad with warm goat cheese cakes on it. Tasty. Then I got back into the car and made my way out, before a new post Old Faithful eruption could start another traffic jam.

I followed the signs to Grant Village, crossing the Continental Divide twice along the way. At one point, I caught a glimpse of Yellowstone Lake. I was surprised — I didn’t remember it being so big. And I saw plenty of evidence of forest fires: where I’d first come into the park, near Old Faithful, and now as I left the park, driving toward the South Entrance. I passed Lewis Falls, on the Snake River, the first waterfall Mike and I had seen when we’d come into the park from the south years before. I clearly remember the fresh forest fire damage at the falls — there was nothing alive back then. Now the dead trees were still there, but new pines were growing in. It would take a long time for the park’s forests to recover.

Grand TetonsThe road followed the Snake River down to Jackson Lake and Grand Teton National Park. The main feature of Grand Teton is the mountain with the same name, on the southwest side of the lake. It’s 13,770 feet tall, very rocky, and has a glacier not far from the top. In this photo, it’s the mountain that’s farthest away. It was after 3 PM and the sun was moving to the west, making it difficult to get a good photo of the mountains from the east. I followed the road, choosing the path that kept me close to the lake rather than the faster road that went direct to Jackson. A scenic drive.

I passed through the southern boundary of the park and, a while later, was approaching Jackson. By this time, I was exhausted. I’d left the top down most of the day and I had been slow-roasted by the sun. All I wanted was a clean, quiet motel room. I stopped about about a half-dozen places on the north side of town and was told that they only rooms left were either smoking or very expensive. I drove through Jackson, figuring I’d find a place somewhere outside of town, on the south side. Jackson, WY, is a tourist processing plant. Tourists go there, park their vehicles, and then proceed through a series of shops and restaurants and tourist attractions designed to wring their money out of them. I couldn’t believe the number of people on the streets. Traffic was horrendous. And I couldn’t understand what attracted these people, like flies to honey. The real tourist attraction was north of town, the lakes and mountains and wildlife. Gift shops and cheap t-shirt joints can be found anywhere. When I finally got out of town, I was glad I hadn’t found a room there.

I wound up at a motel along a creek, just where the creek merges with the Snake River. I took an upstairs room facing the creek. After getting some dinner at a restaurant 3 miles away, I sat on my patio with my maps and a bottle of wine, trying to figure out where I’d go next. I was on my way home — that was for sure. After nearly two weeks and over 3,000 miles on the road, I was ready for my own bed.

The Truth about Wickenburg

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A few facts, from a long-time resident.

We’ve lived in Wickenburg for about eight years now. Sadly, neither of us like the way things are going in town.

When we came to Wickenburg, it had small town charm and lots of open spaces. Since then, the developers (and their good buddies or relatives, the Realtors) have taken over. They’ve reshaped the desert so there are flat spots where there were once hills and they’ve planted houses on them. They’re kind of tricky the way they do this. They cut the land into lots, then build on every other lot. Folks buy the houses because they see so much space between them. Then the developer fills in the gaps and gets other people who like close living to buy those homes.

We have 2-1/2 acres in a very hilly area, with a wash flowing right through our property. That’s good because it keeps our neighbors far away — which we like. It’s not that we don’t like people. It’s just that we don’t like the idea of people looking into our windows from theirs. Now they’re all far enough away that we really don’t need to close the curtains for privacy. I like that. I like lying in bed at night and looking out at the stars.

But the rest of the town is being sold off at an alarming rate. One developer, who I took for a helicopter ride so he could get aerial photos, commented to his friends on how he was hoping to buy the land a church and pastor’s house is on so they could bulldoze it down and build some more condos. I was shocked. The church can’t be older than five years. And where will the parishioners go? I’m not a religious person, but I do have feelings for churchgoing people. Sadly, the developers don’t.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the town’s infrastructure would grow with the development. But it doesn’t. The downtown area is dying, slowly but surely, with much of its space taken up with private “Not a Retail Outlet” offices and vacant storefronts. Every strip mall has at least one empty space, if not more. One block downtown had about 50% of its space empty. I spoke to a property manager about renting one of the storefronts with the idea of setting up a cooperative art gallery, a place for local artists to sell their work. I told her I was concerned about having so many empty storefronts nearby — the area would never attract browsers. She assured me that she was talking to others about renting the other empty storefronts. When I asked her what kind of businesses might be going in, she told me a title company would be moving next door. A title company? There was already a mortgage company in that block. And more offices across the street. Why would I want the only retail business on the whole block? I decided to save my efforts — and my money — for a town with more potential.

Wickenburg’s job situation is equally dismal. There are a few good paying jobs with Remuda Ranch, the Meadows, and the Town of Wickenburg. But most of the town’s other businesses offer low-paying, minimum wage (or slightly higher) part time jobs with few or no benefits. The good jobs aren’t easy to get, either. A friend of mine interviewed for a wrangler position at Remuda Ranch a few years ago. She came away from the interview with a bad taste in her mouth. “I wasn’t Christian enough,” she told me. I guess 20 years of experience wasn’t enough for them if the applicant couldn’t meet the unspoken (and unadvertised) religious requirement.

The new business survival rate in Wickenburg is pitifully low. I think that problem is threefold:

(1) Many businesses are undercapitalized when they begin, so they’re doomed to failure. Common business sense says you need enough capital to pay for business expenses for a whole year before you start your business. Too many people depend on revenue that just doesn’t cut it. That’s why that Property Manager’s client prefers to rent to offices; they’re not depending on retail revenue for survival.

(2) Some businesses offer goods and services that there just isn’t a demand for in Wickenburg. The skateboard shop on Valentine Street is a good example. It was a great shop with lots of good merchandise professionally displayed. But let’s face it: Retirees don’t skateboard. And there weren’t enough skateboarders in town to support the business. Another example was the clothing shop that opened in the relatively new strip mall on the east side of the bridge. I never got a chance to get in there — they were open for less than a year — but I was told that their merchandise was expensive. That just won’t fly in a town where the fixed income retirees and minimum wage workers would prefer to shop in Alco or Wal-Mart.

(3) The town and Chamber of Commerce has no clue (or desire) to help local businesses survive. The town seems more interested in increasing town revenues through property taxes than sales taxes raised by thriving businesses. The town fathers have no qualms about allowing chain restaurants to open next door to existing locally-owned and operated restaurants selling the same type of food. (How many pizza places does Wickenburg need, anyway?) Lately, the only new businesses to come to Wickenburg and last more than a few months are the two “dollar stores” and two check cashing/payday advance places. These are the kinds of businesses that appeal to the lowest income tier or, worse yet, the fringe element responsible for the town’s drug problems and crime. The few events sponsored by the local Chamber of Commerce benefit only a handful of businesses — the motels and restaurants on their favorites lists. Many of these events are poorly publicized and have disappointing attendance anyway. Worse yet, they’re the same old events, year after year, without any new twists. Ho hum.

So people might ask who’s buying all these houses if the town has these economic problems. I ask it all the time. But the answer is clear: retirees.

Wickenburg regularly makes a list of top places to retire. So the folks from the midwest flock to Wickenburg and buy homes. Some of them live there only half the year, which, in turn, further deteriorates the town’s economy by making it impossible for some businesses to survive in the summer. Others live here year-round, but do most of their shopping down in Surprise, at Wal-Mart. That’s also where they fill their cars with gas and visit their doctors. Every once in a while, they clamor that they want a Wal-Mart in Wickenburg. I guess it really doesn’t matter to them if Wickenburg’s remaining small town charm is destroyed by a big box store, as long as it makes cheap shopping more convenient for them. After all, it might increase the choices of minimum wage jobs: clerk in housewares, clerk in electronics, clerk in ladies clothing, etc. It certainly won’t increase the number of employers — if a Wal-Mart comes to Wickenburg, just about every other retail business will be forced out of business.

I wish I didn’t have to report these sad truths about Wickenburg. I wish I could lie or paint a rosy picture of town, the way the Chamber of Commerce and newspaper do. But I’m not a liar. And my rose-colored glasses just don’t tint the picture enough to report it any other way.

Where Would YOU Rather Be?

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A quick comparison of temperatures.

I’m a Mac OS X 10.4 user. Dashboard, a new feature of the operating system, enables me to display, with a push of a key, “widgets” that look up information on the ‘Net. I’m a weather nut, so I have the Weather widgets set up to display when I press the F12 key to display Dashboard.

Here’s what two of my Weather widgets look like right now: Now can you see why I prefer to spend my summer at Howard Mesa, just 35 miles south of the Grand Canyon, than in Wickenburg?

Weather

It’s 103°F. In the shade.

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The “indoor season” begins in Wickenburg.

In most places, winter is the “indoor season,” the time of year when you want to spend most of your time indoors. But not in Arizona’s Sonoran desert.

I remember my first New Year’s Day in Arizona, back in 1997. I’d gone “down the hill” from Wickenburg to a K-Mart in Glendale to buy a pair of cheap bar stools for the apartment I was living in. I wore a T-shirt that day without a jacket and wasn’t the least bit cold. This is great, I remember thinking, conjuring images of the folks back home.

Cold winters were the reason I left New Jersey all those years ago.

Will hot summers be the reason I leave Arizona?

It’s a dry heat. Sure. But it’s still heat. 103.8°F (that’s about 40°C for you metric folks out there) at 2:35 in the afternoon is killer, no matter how dry it is.

And — for Pete’s sake! — it’s still only May.

I don’t remember the heat affecting me this badly years ago. Back in 1997, in May, we were just starting our house hunt. We’d finally sold our home in New Jersey early in the month and Mike and Spot (now deceased) had joined me in Wickenburg. The other half of our belonging arrived by moving van and we rented a second apartment in the Palm Drive complex to store it and set up our offices. Then we started making the rounds with Connie, our Realtor, who spent the entire summer showing us every home available for sale, no matter how poorly it matched our list of requirements.

I still remember walking up driveways and walkways and around houses in the summer heat, getting more and more depressed with every outing, but not really feeling the heat. Was that a mild summer? Or had my thin blood welcomed the warmth after so many fickle East Coast summers?

To give you an idea of the mindset of people where we’d come from, when we told people back home that we’d bought a new house, their first question was, “Does it have air conditioning?”

What the hell do you think? I felt like replying. Do you think we’re idiots? That we’d buy a brand new house without air conditioning in a town where summer temperatures routinely get into the triple digits?

Phoenix temperatures make big news in New York. New Yorkers love to hear about how hot it is in the summer here, the same way people in Arizona love to hear about how cold and miserable it is in New York in January. Of course, I’ll take a 103.8°F on a May day in Wickenburg long before I take an 80/80 day in New York. (That’s 80°F with 80% humidity.) A typical forecast on a summer day in New York would be the “3 H’s” — that’s hazy, hot, and humid. Ick.

But if that first summer wasn’t bad, things changed. It seemed as if every summer became hotter than the one before it. We bought blinds for the three big 8 x 4 windows on our second floor and they stayed closed every morning (and most of the afternoon) from equinox to equinox, just to give our air conditioning units a fair chance at keeping up. I made the fatal error of leaving my purse on the dashboard of my car one day while it was parked in the driveway. My credit cards, slipped into their individual slots in my wallet, melted flat and would no longer make an impression at the store. Thank heaven the magnetic stripe still worked.

Two years ago, it was unbearable to me. That’s when I realized that any outdoor activity had to be completed by 8 AM (at the latest) and the rest of the day had to be spent in air-conditioned comfort. Air conditioned house to air conditioned car to air conditioned office to air conditioned car to air conditioned store to air conditioned car to air conditioned house. Get the idea? The windows go back on the Jeep in mid May and it’s sealed up tight, just so the air conditioning worked better. Better yet, don’t go out at all. After all, it takes at least ten minutes for the air conditioning to cool down a hot vehicle. And heaven help you if you have black leather seats or fail to shade the steering wheel when you run into the grocery store.

Last summer, I had some relief. I worked as a pilot up at the Grand Canyon. My schedule was 7 days on and 7 days off, although I normally worked a 6 on/8 off schedule. I lived at our Howard Mesa property while working. It’s about 15 miles north of Williams (as the helicopter flies) at an elevation of 6700 feet. The heliport at the Canyon was at 6300 feet. High altitudes make a big difference. I don’t think I experienced a day above 95°F while I was up there. And when I came home for my week off, I spent every day in my office, cranking out the books that pay the bills. The summer seemed to fly by (no pun intended).

This summer, I’m going back to Howard Mesa. I have one more book to write and it’s due on June 15. With luck, by June 20, I’ll be up there with my camper and my horses and my bird and my helicopter. I have a big project to work on this summer — converting a 12 x 20 shed to a cabin with a bathroom and kitchen — and a book project to work on in the evenings. I think this is going to be a killer summer and there’s no air conditioning at Howard Mesa, but I think (and hope) I’ll be able to deal with it for the two and half months I plan to be away.

I’ll cheat Wickenburg’s indoor season the right way this year, using the same cop-out the snowbirds use: I’ll just leave town.

The Coyotes are Howling

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And other items of interest.

It’s just after 6 AM on a Tuesday morning. This time of year, we wake up when it gets light. Alex is like an alarm clock and he starts singing and whistling when the room gets light enough to see. I know I could just throw a blanket over his cage and keep him quiet until we’re ready to wake up, but these days, we still wake up before him at least two or three days a week.

Off in the near distance — perhaps over by Rancho de los Caballeros — a bunch of coyotes are singing their coyote songs. I once tried to research why coyotes howl. A few articles on the Web addressed the subject, but none were conclusive. The coyote song is one of the things I like about living in the desert.

Took a break to go down and feed the horses. It’s getting hot these days — in the 90s every day — and the fly situation down there is getting bad. This year, I’m trying a new fly control system. Called Fly Predators, they’re tiny little “non-nuisance” flies that eat “nuisance” fly larvae. The idea is that you spread these little flies around where the annoying flies lay their eggs — primarily on horse manure — and they eat the eggs. Supposedly, if you have enough of the little buggers, they’ll eat just about all the fly eggs, thus killing the fly population before it grows.

I’m not sure if its working. In fact, I suspect that it isn’t. Maybe I started too late. Or maybe it’s all a lot of bull. I asked a few people about their experiences with this solution and they all had good things to say. It’s costly — about $120 per season — but that’s the same amount we’d spend if we had to spray down the horses every day. Anyway, I spread my monthly batch of fly predators this morning. If I don’t see results within a few weeks, I’m going to assume it just doesn’t work. The horses like it a lot better at Howard Mesa. The flies haven’t taken hold there yet and, with luck, they won’t. No need for fly masks and the boys have 40 acres to roam around and graze. Last weekend we took them to Groom Creek Horse Camp in the Prescott National Forest. What a wonderful place. Nice, drive-thru campsites designed for people with horses. Two of the sites even had corrals (rather than rope ties) and we were lucky enough to get one of them. We did a 9-mile loop ride to the top of Spruce Mountain on Saturday and a 7-mile loop ride on the Wolf Creek Trail on Sunday. We were part of a group of perhaps 30 people/horses, although we didn’t all ride together each day.

Prescott is a nice place. At an elevation of about 5000 feet, it gets pretty cold in the winter and stays cool in the summer. Lots of recreation, parks, and shopping. Sun and shade. The other day, Vicki, the woman who’d organized the Groom Creek trip asked me where we lived.

“Wickenburg,” I told her.

“Wickenburg?” she repeated, obviously surprised. “But you’re too young to live in Wickenburg.”

“Exactly.”

I could go into detail here about how much this little conversation bugged me, especially since my Georgetown trip two weeks ago convinced me that I was living in the wrong place. But I’ll save that for another blog entry.

About a year ago, Mike and I spent some time with a Realtor, looking at homes in the Prescott area. It’s tough for us because our house is nearly paid for and neither of us wanted to walk into a big new mortgage. I couldn’t believe the dumps this woman was showing us — all above our price range. (Do Realtors ever listen?) What a waste of time. Then Mike got a job in Phoenix and we decided that the drive from Prescott would just be too darn long for him.

Sadly, there’s no chance of him ever getting a decent paying job in Wickenburg. Fortunately, I can work anywhere and still make the same living. But I do wish I lived somewhere where my helicopter tour and charter business would do better. It’s tough doing business in a town where so few people want to spend money. I guess that’s why so many of the businesses that start in Wickenburg fail within the first year. And why there are so many empty storefronts in town.

Other items of interest include the irony of a humane mouse trap. If you’ve been reading these blogs, you know that I use a humane mouse trap to catch mice and set them free far away from where I caught them. Last summer, I even took two mice for helicopter rides — you can find the blog entry about that somewhere on this site. Well, last week I noticed that a mouse was building a nest in the trunk of my Honda S2000. I love that car — it’s the last sports car I’ll ever buy — and I’m doing my best to make sure it lasts 20 or 30 years. Having a mouse use insulation beyond the trunk compartment to build himself a cozy home in the trunk was not desirable. So before we went away to Groom Creek, I set up the trap with a bit of peanut butter and closed it in the trunk. When I got home on Sunday, a tiny mouse was trapped inside, waiting to be set free.

I decided to drive him up the road and let him out at some bushes away from all the neighbor’s homes (and my garage). I parked alongside of the road, opened my door, opened the trap, and shook the little bugger out. He landed on the ground, but instead of running into the bushes, he ran under my Jeep. I figured: how stupid can the mouse be? He must have run across the road. He couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to hide behind one of my tires. Right? Wrong. I pulled back very slowly, giving him every opportunity to run away. But he must have been really dumb, because when I’d backed up about 10 feet, I saw his crushed body on the road.

Damn.

But you can’t say I didn’t try. Next time, I’ll get out of the car and drop the mouse in a clump of bushes.

Mike’s cousin Rick said I probably did the mouse a favor anyway. He’s right. It’s also snake season — there was a good sized rattler on my driveway on Sunday afternoon — and snakes eat mice. At least this mouse’s death was quick and painless.

We don’t kill the snakes unless they become a nuisance around the house. Don’t want the dog getting bitten. The snakes keep the mice away. One year, we had a bad mouse problem in the shed. Droppings really did a number on one of Mike’s old saddles and I had a saddle blanket ruined. The next year, a rattlesnake moved in under the shed. I’d see him in the corner of the chicken yard in the morning, coiled up, resting. The chickens didn’t bother him and he didn’t bother them. But there were no mice that year, either.

It’s almost 7 AM. Time to get dressed and take Alex to work. He’s chattering away as I type this. “Howdy partner!” That’s his latest vocabulary phrase and he really likes to say it. “Come on Jack, go outside.” I think he orders the dog around more than we do. The dog, of course, ignores him.