Monday, August 13, 2007

Muskrat love? - Jen


OK, first of all let me say, I love nature. I love nature shows, looking at it from the car, watching it while sitting on the front porch. Not so much when confronted with it face to face. I don't often admit this, but I really hate nature in person. When nature is in my grill? I turn into a squealing, shrieking, freaked out wreck.
So I'm doing chores, out in the quarantine pasture. Beautiful sunny breezy morning, tra la la la. I notice one of the ewes is in the playhouse and she's all worked up, bamming into the walls and twisting around. I thought - BEES! right? So I get her away from the playhouse and cautiously look in, searching for a nest on the ceiling. My eyes were drawn downward, and there, was a spitting mad, nasty rat tailed funky mouth buck toothed MUSKRAT. I'm squishing my nose as I write. GHAAHuhuhuhu. shiver.

I slam the door shut to the playhouse, and in a panic think I will run over to mom's and get Sam, her Jack Russell, since he is the big muskrat hunter now. But then I think, "No this is ridiculous, get a hold of yourself." Plus that, I know I would fall to pieces if I had to watch him kill the varmint. So, instead, I run into the house and in my emergency voice call Will to come out and help me. Bless his heart he was outside in a few minutes (unusual). We grabbed a bucket with a lid and the fishing net. We managed to get the (gg h h h shudder) muskrat into the bucket, lid snapped on tight. Ran directly to the van, and took him to the swamp. William kept on threatening to crack the lid a little so the "poor thing" could breathe. I said under no circumstance was he to open that *&%$ lid, in my "I'm not kidding and I will take away tv/video games until you are 18" voice. I kept replaying in my head that movie scene with Deborah Winger driving to her doctor with that nasty lice infested pigeon glued to her hair (Forget Paris).
So, we (Will) released him and hopefully the muskrat is now happily digging holes in the swamp bank and will live a long healthy life, miles away from my sweet sheep and me.




1 comment:

bopeep said...

Great Blog, Jen,
Reminded me of a story at our house with a bat....when I had a great young son to catch the darned thing.
Thanks for the photo of Tink.