If the meteorologists are to be believed, we’re heading for
a pre-winter ass-kicking sometime in the next 24-48 hours. Even if they’re not,
we’re not taking any chances around here. Early season October snowstorms have
a tendency to be singularly brutal, especially after a prolonged
mild-autumn-slash-Indian-summer. We had one of those last year too and the
first big wet snow had the same effect on the still-leafy trees as boulders
falling on a flat roof. I spent half the night sitting on the back porch
listening to the shotgun crack of tree limbs breaking under the weight of
oatmeal snow that had set like concrete in their still-lush canopies and awoke
to find branches as wide as my thighbones impaled into frozen ground. We were
sawing our way out of that mess for weeks and the giant juniper bushes framing
the west side of the house never regained their original shape after having
been bowed flat to the ground under a ton of snow.
So this afternoon is prep time, which includes a quick run to the firewood people for a half-cord of oak logs to keep the fireplace burning round the clock, a stop at the Korean liquor store for a fifth of bourbon and five liters of wine, a trip to the gas station to fuel the chainsaw, and, for good measure, a little time in the garage spent sharpening the ax. I’ll also need to evict the family of spiders living in the Sorels I keep by the back door and have the kid rake the yard one last time. With any luck, we’ll get hammered and I’ll get to spend the rest of the week wearing fleecy pajamas and listening to Thelonius Monk in my underground lair, stirring only to toss another log on the fire or refill my wine. Can you tell I’m ready for winter?
On something of a related note, my only regret about the end of autumn, at least for the next week or so, is that it’s the end of prime cowboy-boot wearing season and I’ve only taken advantage of it once so far this year. Cowboy boots aren’t a Colorado thing, but a general principles thing -- everyone should own at least one pair regardless of where you live. I’ve got two, some black Tony Lamas that are good both for dressing up and for kicking around town and, my favorites, a pair of no-name brown shit-kickers I got in a thrift store in Oxnard, Calif. about a decade ago. They were all but destroyed when I bought them, scuffed beyond all repair with dual sprung soles and so weakened at the ankle from being kicked across a bedroom countless times by some exhausted Mexican strawberry picker (or so I like to imagine) that the upper leather falls over just like those juniper trees. But they fit like I’d worn them in another life, and for $10, they were mine.
I almost didn’t get to enjoy them. The local cobbler who fixed the soles actually ruined their soul by polishing them. I couldn’t believe it -- a lifetime of character buffed away in an afternoon, to the point where they looked like shiny new Buster Browns you’d see on a 5 year old at Easter Mass. I almost punched the guy, but he thought he was doing me a favor by duding them up. I immediately took them hiking, drove over them with the car and left them out in the weather for a few months. Luckily, “neglect” is my default setting when it comes to wardrobe items and it only took about a year to overcome an afternoon’s brush with some shoe polish and an overzealous shoemaker and they’re once again perfectly sprung, frayed and scuffed in all the right places. Maybe I’ll take them out to split some wood before the weather flies.
And as a final paean to the changing of seasons, I must mention the mice, another aspect of life that’s as unavoidable in Colorado as fleas are in the Carolinas. As soon as the evening temperatures drop below 60, the field mice start looking for warmer places to spend the night than wherever they do it in the summertime. That place is invariably my house. But after having lived here for most of the past decade, I’ve managed to plug the holes and crevasses that lead inside. But some nimble intruders managed to make their way into the garage.
Normally, I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy. I share my basement office with a few hundred funnel web spiders who are generally happy enough to keep to themselves. The rule of thumb is that we can all live in peace, so long as they don’t try to hang out on my desks or chairs, an arrangement that generally works pretty well. The only shared space where we have to keep an eye out for one another is the toilet, their only source of water. I’ve taken to lifting the lid before sitting down, just to avoid any unpleasant surprises.
(A quick aside here: That habit may have saved my life when I was in Sierra Leone last year, at least by preventing me from having a heart attack. While staying in a miserable little shed of a guesthouse out on Lakka Beach, I took a trip to the loo in the middle of the night, lighting the way with my headlamp. Without thinking, I lifted the lid as I do at home … and clinging under the seat was a tarantula the size of my face. I didn’t shit for a week.)
Which of course is all beside the point when it comes to the mice who’ve decided to live in the garage. Had they kept themselves there, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to take them out, but that’s the trouble with mice. They can’t leave well enough alone. Before long, I started hearing them in the walls and soon discovered that they’d breached the castle through a hole I’d cut in the drywall to accommodate some electrical wiring I’d done about a million years ago. The hole was halfway up the wall, though, and couldn’t imagine how they’d gotten to it. But one night, coming home after dark, the blazing headlights on my truck acted as a circus spotlight for one little guy who performed a series of springing leaps from the bucket to the trash can to the workbench up to the boom box and along the dangling power cord of the electric sander hanging from a peg on the wall before swan diving gracefully into the hole from about two feet away. Impressive. But not enough to spare him.
When I’m killing mice, I don’t toy around with those pussy no-mess traps, the ones that have hidden glue strips inside some shoebox and which come with a promise from the manufacturer that you’ll never have to see a dead mouse. I need proof, so my preferred deathtrap is lethal poison, the kind that promises “instant death with just one feeding.” One tray of these deadly blue crystals is more than enough to do the trick, but I laced the whole garage with four. Why take chances? Spying feeble little rodents crawling around in a death throe for the next week is not most people’s idea of a satisfying Homeowner Accomplishment, but I’m not most people. The climate here is such that any that died in private will wither up like old leaves. I’ll find their skeletons when it’s time for spring cleaning, or they’ll just be entombed in the walls for all time. That’s another reason to be thankful I took care of that particular chore before the snow falls. Wet weather makes it all the more unpleasant.