June 2008 - Where Outside Ends & Inside Begins

One of the biggest differences I've noticed between living in the city and the country is what constitutes appropriate housing, as well as what variety of living beings might be found under one roof.

In the city, homes are most often preceded by black-topped roads that lead to concrete driveways that take you to well-manicured sidewalks, to an inviting front door. Once inside, you kick off your shoes and plop down somewhere, without worrying what critters might be hiding under the cushions, or what strange smell is coming from the other room, or if you accidentally tracked mud somewhere you shouldn't have. At worst, there might be a dog or a cat, or some other relatively mild-natured pet calling the place home too.

In the country, however, that's not always the case. Here you can find a much "looser" assortment of living arrangements. Critters are often on the seemingly wrong side of the walls.

Just some of the situations I've witnessed so far include a horse pen on the side of the house so the horse could stick its head inside the bedroom window anytime it wanted. Or, the house with a skunk family residing in a pen on the front porch. My kids have friends who raised motherless piglets in their bedrooms - all fifteen of them. Their cousins even took in a newborn mouse they found in the shed, feeding it milk and making it a bed in a can of cotton balls.

I've heard many a story of the town's old-time doctor administering CPR in someone's living room while the prized goats stood on the couch, or the undertaker arriving to find the family hog guarding the front door.

My family got a taste of this when we moved to the farmhouse.

When we decided to come back to West Virginia, I had only one absolute rule: I'll live anywhere EXCEPT in an old shack up a holler. When I got suckered into that exact situation months ago, my new mantra became, "OK - I can live in old and cramped, but I won't live in nasty and dirty."

That rule only lasted until the first spring rains, which brought lots of "nasty and dirty" mud and other wild things in the house.

So, now I live in a shack up the holler that's constantly bombarded by mud and other yuckies, not to mention the layers of dirt road dust (no matter how many times you vacuum and clean, it just finds it's way in again). The only mantra I had left was "Absolutely, positively without a shadow of a doubt, no animals in the house."

We've worked hard to rid the place of the assorted wildlife inhabiting the house when we arrived. There were many snakes, the occasional chipmunk, millions of lady bugs, a wayward house wren, and an assortment of creepy crawly insects I'm not even sure you could find in an encyclopedia. I even put the family cat out to fend for herself so I wouldn't have to clean up her hair and change a litter box.

Our German shepherds, Pepper and Sugar (can you guess which one is black and which is white?) got the boot, too. They used to be house dogs when we had a concrete driveway and a nice grassy yard. But they quickly became outside pets after we arrived on the farm and their muddy footprints identified every piece of furniture I owned.

Everything went smooth for a while until just a few weeks ago. It was one of those days when you don't know what the weather might do from minute to minute. A little sun here and there, with some occasional rain showers mixed in between. It rained heavily the day before, and some that morning, so everything was still damp and mud puddles were everywhere.

My son and nephew were with me that day. We walked down the gravel hollow looking for mushrooms and somehow got sidetracked at every mud puddle. We came back with tadpoles and a couple of half-dead toads in a small bucket.

My husband, in the mean time, was cutting brush and found a turtle which he gave to the boys when we returned. The boys went in the house to play while I helped Richard carry cut brush. After a while passed, I decided to check on them and see what was happening.

As I walked through the propped open front door, it looked like a scene from one of those barnyard movies. I first noticed our two 80-pound dirty dogs lying on the couch. Nearby, the cat perched on the back of the chair intently watching something on the floor, which I quickly realized was the turtle crawling across my nice area rug, not far from the bucket holding the toad and his offspring. On the ottoman was a cluster of dirty duck eggs the boys had found outside somewhere (our ducks just roam the farm).

Then I saw something move in the kitchen. It happened to be Red, Richard's big white rooster, who had let himself in through the open door and was scoping out any tasty morsels he could find on the floor.

For a split second, I thought I was having a bad dream. "Where does the outside end and the inside begin?" I wondered.

Right in the middle of it all two boys sat, eyes glued to the TV playing a video game and completely unaware of the wildlife situation occurring around them.

"Boys!" I yelled. "What are you doing in here with all these animals?" Both turned to look at me, and at the same time spotted the animal population gathered around them, which didn't seem to phase either one bit. They went right back to their game unaffected.

"Oh well," I thought, trying not to feel defeated. I just hoped and prayed that no one I knew would show up for at least a couple of hours. Because at that moment I realized I was now living in that old shack up a cramped holler looking quite nasty and dirty, complete with all of the wildlife on the wrong side of the door - again.