I can't Believe it

I can't believe Melinda was voted off.

Taking the tractor to dinner

Rick had gone into town to do errands, visit friends, and buy materials at Home Depot. I had chosen to stay home and play some music, watch TV, and just relax.

I also had to have dinner...

He had taken the only vehicle that was running at the time and I wanted to go eat dinner down the road. Friday night is Fish Fry night at the Trail's End Restaurant, right on Hwy. 118 near Rickett's Glen State Park, and I wanted some. The place is about three miles from our house; down Bethel Hill road a ways, then down another road another spell. Too far to walk, I could have ridden my bike, but I just didn't have the energy. The only other option was the ATV.

"It's not legal," I thought to myself, and then laughed at that thought. As long as I stayed to the side of the road, went slow, and kept a look out for cars (there are very few cars on this road), then I could make it.

I was amused by the thought of me riding down the road - images of farmers riding down main roads on their tractors came to mind. There I was: camera slung over my shoulder, leather hat, and glasses riding down a country road, wind in my hair... (okay, face), singing to the road. (Okay, I didn't really sing, because that's a good way to eat bugs.)

The drive was hard, as the ATV kept pulling to the right. I had to fight it to stay on the road, and while doing that I was making sure my hat didn't fly off in the wind. Only one car passed me the whole time. I waved to a lady feeding her horses, and slowly made my way there,

Once there, I chowed down on fried fish, mashed sweet potatoes, and beets; washing it all down with lemonade.
The place was crowded with locals - everyone seemed to know each other. Fortunately, no one was smoking near me during dinner (Can you imagine that people still smoke in restaurants?)

After I ate, I hopped on my ride and repeated the experience back the way I came. The horses, the section of the road being repaired... . All in all, I was amused. The event reminded me of a little desk calendar called, "You might be a redneck if..."
I wondered if there was a page that had a guy riding an ATV to dinner.

My Tools are talking to me

As many of you know, I work a lot with power tools; building walls, floors, decks, etc. Over the last couple of years I have noticed that a few of those tools seem to be talking to me, have an accent, and are creating movie sound effects.

Recently, while working at a shop up in Felton, CA. I was using an old bandsaw. This creature stood probably seven feet tall, was green, and as I ran wood through it, it made the sound of an alien spaceship. Not a modern spaceship though - it was more like the kind in the old movies, perhaps from the 60's. Every time, as I worked that machine, my mind drifted to thoughts of aliens landing in a corn field somewhere and taking over the nearby town. Soon, spacecraft would land all over the world and dominate earth....

Another tool that talks to me is the wet saw we use to cut tile. I swear as I run the tile through the saw it says, "Steeeevieeee Darrroooooowwwww". (Stevie Darrow was a guy in high school that one of my friends had a crush on. A couple of us would tease her by saying his name all drawn out - in an almost incomprehensible way, yet she would realize what we were saying and pretend to get all mad at us.) Everytime we work on a floor I think back to those old days in school.

But perhaps my favorite tool that talks to me is my Italian Router. No, it is not made in Italy, it actually speaks Italian. A router, for those of you who do not know, is a little tool that has a very fast moving bit in the center that is used to, well, rout out wood. Sign makers use them; perhaps you've seen them making signs at the fair. They are also used to create a fancy edge to a piece of trim... anyway, they make this high pitched whirring sound, and as they run along the wood, the pitch changes, speeds up and slows down.

I don't speak Italian (boy, I'd love to) but when I was little, my best friends were Italian, and their mother would make fresh ravioli and speak Italian as she did her chores.

My router sounds just like her, speaking fast and animated, running through the house, yelling at the kids, telling her husband to get off the couch and bring in some wood for the fireplace.

Most of the time, when I am using the router, in the noise it creates, I talk back to it in pretend Italian, yelling back, carrying on an important conversation and making a lot of noise.

I am glad that I work by myself most of the time, though I guess I don't really care if others see or hear me.

"There is that guy that talks to his tools in Italian!" they would say. "He even thinks that some of them are going to take over the world!"

Mothers would hold their children close to them, walking on the other side of the street if possible, and warning the kids to "stay away from the crazy man who talks to his tools."

But I bet a few lonely souls out there would smile a secret smile, nodding in my direction. They too, have been known to hear things, to take their imagination a step further and create in their minds what is not apparent to the average person.

We are kindred spirits - we talk to our tools.

Rhan's World: Wild Cats and Dogs

Rhan's World: Wild Cats and Dogs

Wild Cats and Dogs

Hello and thank you for visiting my new blog site that allows you to comment without creating an account yourself.

Yesterday, while looking for something in the garage, I heard a tiny sound, the fragile mewing of a kitten somewhere amid the clutter. I carefully removed toolboxes and storage crates, trying to make sure I didn't crush the little creature when I found it.
And I did find it - there between a couple of buckets alone save for it's little brother or sister that sadly had died.

It made sense - I had seen a cat going in and out of the garage since we got here. Rick went up in the attic of the garage and found four more kittens, all cute, longhair, and variations of black and white. So small and helpless.

We put them in a cage and are presently trying to catch the mother so we can take them all somewhere where they can be adopted and taken care of. We simply cannot keep them here.

This all reminded me of an incident a couple of years ago involving some abandoned puppies here in the woods. I wrote a story about them and would like to share it with you. Here it is:

The Wild Beagles of Red Rock, PA

It was early Monday morning, Memorial Day to be exact, that Rick returned home from an overnight camping trip. I had thought of going with him, but thought better of it, as I had much to do at home and I figured he might appreciate some alone time with his good friends.
He arrived quite early and mentioned that he might have been even earlier if he had not come across some abandoned puppies on the the side of the mountain road.
“I want to go back there soon to see if we can find where they are hiding, and perhaps give them some food,” he said. He told me how, as he was driving down the road, he spotted three puppies along the shoulder. He turned the car around, parked, and slowly approached the dogs. They were perhaps four months old, he said, and were very scared of people. He managed to get one of them to get close enough for a short period of time to sniff his hand as the others watched from a safe distance.
He could see that at least two of them had encountered a porcupine, the painful quills covering their faces, making it most likely very difficult for them to eat. The third one had possibly a broken leg and was the most timid of the three, and stayed even further away.
During that time a man drove up and told Rick that there used to be four dogs, but one of them had been found dead in the creek. He added that several locals had been aware of them and had been feeding them, hoping to win their eventual trust.
So here we were, driving up to the mountain, a large cage in the back of the truck in case we managed to catch one of them. We stopped in at the local store to buy some dog food.
At the counter, Rick told the lady that he was going up to try to find some dogs up the road and she said, “The Beagles?” Yeah, she heard of ‘em. “Lots of people have been trying for two weeks to get them and haven’t had any luck.”
Beagles, I said to myself. I’ve thought of getting a beagle for a long time. Ever since my dog Lucky started slowing down, I thought that someday – someday when I was ready to get another pet, and it came to me in just the right way. My little Lucky passed away a couple of months ago and well, we’ll see how the day goes. Beagles...

We drove on up the mountain to where Rick pointed out where he had first seen them, and then to the steep, rocky side of the hill where they had all run away to.
“Somewhere up there,” he said “is where they must be finding shelter, and during the day they must come down to cross the road so they can drink from the creek on the other side of the road.”
We drove a little ways until we found a turnout where we could park the truck and set out on a fire road behind where we thought they might be, hoping to perhaps espy them from above and approach them that way.
“Looks like it is going to rain,” we said to each other as we quietly walked up the road, the sky darkening above us. I tried to keep my tennis shoes dry for as long as possible, stepping lightly and avoiding the many branches in my way.
In time, we came to a bend in the road at which point we decided that up would be the best route to take. Leaving the path, we quietly scrambled upwards through the bushes, finding the path of least resistence, stepping carefully on the many flat rocks that were often prone to slipping below us.
We whispered directions to each other and used hand signals as we thought that the wild beagles might be within earshot, and didn’t want to scare them off. I watched breathlessly as a young deer bounced by, unaware of our presence, running from something it seemed. The beagles must be near, I thought.
The rain had come, and though the trees protected us a bit, all illusions of staying dry slowly vanished as the rain made it’s way through the leaves and on to ourselves. The wet branches brushed up against my pants and soon I could feel the sloshing of water in my shoes. Still, we climbed the mountain, searching for any sign of our puppies.
Once at the top, we chose a direction to take, hopefully one that would encompass the area we thought the dogs would be in, and began to work our way down towards the road. We worked our way across the wooded hillside in silence, stepping lightly so as not to disturb any plants; so that we could listen for the wild beagles.
I wondered what they looked like. Were they still rather small, or had they grown to adult size? Rick had mentioned that they seemed to be around four months old, but wasn’t sure. And why would someone leave four puppies in the woods, by a winding, heavily used mountain road? How hard would it have been, I muttered, to have taken them to the SPCA, or to have put a notice up at the local stores and gas stations? Did they even try? Did these people have children, and if they did, what sort of life lessons were they inadvertantly teaching them by abandoning these pups out in the woods?
We heard and saw nothing of particular note. No rustling in the woods, no barking, so we decided to work our way down to the road to take a look from down there, perhaps seeing something as we looked back up to where we had been. Rick went first, saying that once down to the road, he could tell me how close we were to the area the dogs were sighted. After quite some time, he emerged on the road and yelled up at me that we should continue to head up the road. I found my way down rather quickly and easily, following a gentle slope to the edge of the road. Rick showed me the path he had taken, a near cliff that he had to scale down.
By now we were completely soaked, the sound of wet tennis shoes accompanying my every step, my wet jeans making it a bit harder to walk; still we walked up the road a bit before deciding that we should turn around and head back towards the truck that was parked down aways.
Down to the left somewhere was the creek that someone said they had found one of dogs, unfortunately dead. We figured that they must visit that area often, as there was no water on the hillside we had just hiked. I decided that I would climb down the hillside to the area the creek was and follow it down a ways, working my way up to the road in a while.
I scampered down the rocky debris at a place where a drainpipe emptied off the road, noticing how much garbage accumulated there. Why, I asked myself, do people feel it perfectly natural to toss out all sorts of crap along a road: cigarette butts, cans, bottles, buckets, the list goes on and on. In some of the most beautiful places, too. Perhaps it takes a special person to be so irresponsible and not think twice, which is why were here in the first place - to find these wild beagles that had been abandoned.
It was beautiful down there amid the lush greenery by the creek. I stepped again lightly, trying to make as little impact on the forest floor as I imagined myself tracking a wild animal. I laughed to myself, recalling a time when I was maybe four or five years old. I lived out on the country at that time, and I used to love to run around practically naked, wearing a loincloth I had made out of a handkerchief or something like that. I would sneak up on things, carrying a spear I had made out of a stick, pretending to be an Indian like I had seen on television shows.
I followed the creek as it paralleled the road high above until I felt that it was time to go up and meet Rick, who himslef was scouting the roadside for signs of the wild beagles.
I climbed back up alongside a trash-ridden drainage spillway; back up to the road.
Once I was up there, I spotted Rick and he pointed out the side of the mountain that he had first seen the dogs retreat to just earlier that morning. We climbed up the steep hillside and began once again to look for the dogs, quessing as to where they might be seeking shelter from the continuing rain. We found an outcropping of rock and as we climbed over it, we looked down, hoping to see them under its shelter, or in one of the small caves that had been created by mother nature herself. As we looked down, I motioned to Rick that I thought they might be down there below us; I don’t know why exactly, I just had a hunch that after all this time, they might finally be found there.
I climbed down around the rocks and started to think to myself that I was probably wrong, and that there far away from us by now, having heard us long ago. After all, here we were, a couple of humans trapsing through the woods, thinking that we could sneak up on three dogs whose ears we all know can hear far better than we can.
I had no sooner thought this to myself, when all of a sudden I rounded a corner of the rock outdropping and came face to face to all three, startled, barking, and very apprehensive wild beagles; three normal, like you’d see in a neighbor’s yard and typically cute teenage beagles. Only instead of running and jumping up on me, they ran away, pausing a moment to look at me. It happened so fast. I tried gently calling for them, thinking I was dealing with domesticated animals, but they ran off in three different directions in the woods.
We could see where they were laying, a matted down patch of leaves under an overhang of rock, safe from the rain. We left them food there, hoping they might associate food with our smell and eventually learn to trust us, or any of the others who were known to be leaving food for them.
We went back to the truck, shoes and pants soaking wet, and drove home, hopeful that our efforts were not in vain. As we drove, I thought about how many people had been involved so far with these dogs: the rangers, the man who first talked to Rick about the dogs, the lady at the store who sold him some dog food, and the several people where were said to be feeding them. All these people, taking time out from their own lives to try to help some poor dogs that had been abandoned by someone who didn’t even take the time to take them to the pound, or post an ad somewhere.
The next day was Rick’s birthday and after work, we stopped in a bar in town, about thirty miles from home and even farther from Red Rock, the area where the dogs were. He was telling us that it would be nice to get one of these dogs on his birthday, as he had gotten one of his favorite dogs on a previous birthday many years earlier.
As we were telling our friend who met us there about the dogs, a man sitting at the other end of the bar looked up and said, “Are you talking about the beagles? My girlfriend has been feeding them and trying to get them to trust her, too.”
We had a short conversation about the dogs and I was even further impressed by how many different lives had been touched by these animals. Lives who probably had little in common but for the love of animals.
The next day Rick left the house early to go up to the mountain to feed the dogs before he went off to work, some thirty five miles or so in the opposite direction. He told me that he would stop by the house on the way back. I had been in the yard playing with Cloud, his dog, for only a few minutes, and when I came back in the house I saw that there were a couple of messages left on the machine.
The first one was from Rick saying, “Are you there? Pick up. Have you already left? I’ll try calling you on the cell phone.”
The second one was again from Rick only minutes after the first one and said, “I won’t be coming home after all. I’ll tell you about it later.”
I was annoyed with myself that I missed those calls, having missed them by just minutes; I wanted to know what was up. I had the conflicting feelings that either something bad had happened, or that he had simply ran late and wanted to save a little time by going straight to work. Either way I was extremely frustrated to have to wait until he decided to call me.
I went to work and tried to have patience. Some things are out of my control I told myself, as I made sure that the cell phone was never out of my hearing. I wouldn’t miss another call, that was for sure.
Fairly soon I heard the buzzing of the cell phone as it vibrated on the desk; I answered it before it started to ring. It was Rick and I could barely wait to hear what had happened.
“Two of them had been hit by a car,” he told me. “One was already dead and the other died in my truck as I was taking it to the vet.” He seemed so tired as he spoke, the emotional effect leaving him somewhat drained, though he didn’t say so in so many words.
“I’m so sorry,” was all I could think of saying. I felt awful; both for the poor dogs that never had a chance, and for Rick, who tried so make things right for them.
I worked the best I could that day, thinking about the wild beagles of Red Rock and all the attention they had received without even trying. I thought about all the people who were trying to save them; people who didn’t know each other, but were nonetheless working together to try to teach these dogs to trust.
I thought too, of the driver of the car who had hit them, and how he or she must have felt. I then thought of the last beagle, alone in the woods, porcupine quills in its face, and likely more scared then ever.
The next day Rick said he was going to go up to the mountain and bury the dog that had died in his truck on the way to the vet’s office.
“Someone’s gotta do it,” he said as if though he had no other choice.
“Thanks,” I said to him.

We didn’t go back to find that last dog. We had been getting ready to go back across the country and were finally ready to leave.
As we drove away that morning I thought about what Rick had said. No, somebody doesn’t have to do anything. People don’t have to care about a bunch of abandoned dogs on the side of the road in the first place. Noone has to take time out of their own busy lives to drive out of their way to feed some dogs that don’t even want have anything to do with them. And noone has to pick up an injured dog and hope that it will make it to the vets, even though its dying eyes are saying otherwise. No, people don’t have to do any of those things, but thank God that they do.
And as for the person who left those young, innocent dogs there to face their fate: you didn’t have to do it either. You had so many other options, though you didn’t take the time to realize it. You could have called the SPCA, placed an ad, or even as a last resort, abandoned them in a safe place where they would have been found by someone who could have then done the right thing.
Perhaps you didn’t realize the many, many lives you would affect by leaving those pups where you did, but you have.
Many lives were touched by those dogs; the wild beagles of Red Rock Mountain.