Fixing the fence

We have a lot of plastic drinking cups at the ranch. We have some glass cups and glasses, but most of our stuff is plastic. Crystal glassware is non-existent.

Girl Twin has a scream that will break crystal. She screams often. Often enough that we always wear shoes in our house to avoid the broken glass. She screams when she sees a spider. When Boy twin chases her, she screams. If she’s happy, she screams if she spots something interesting from the car, she screams. Plastic drinkware just makes sense.

I have either trained my ears not to hear her or my hearing has deteriorated to a point where I no longer hear her.

Elaine, Ivy and I were altering our fencing this morning. The twins were helping out by taking care of the dogs. I was in my own world, when guess what, Girl Twin screamed.

I was tuning her out until she interrupted her screaming by yelling “Rattlesnake”! That will get your attention. I looked up to see her pulling all three leashes of Team Pyrenees. Walter was loose and circling the snake. Everyone was yelliing at Walter, he backed up and ran away without getting bit.

It took eight years and five months to finally see a rattlesnake at the ranch. Without a doubt, it was not the first one to visit the ranch, but it is the first one we have actually seen.

With Girl Twin and the dogs safely out of range of the snake, I asked Ivy to go back to the house to get a gun. Several years ago I bought some snake shot and put it safely away. Ivy couldn’t find it. She brought me a gun with bullets. I am going to need to hit a moving snake with a bullet the size of five stitches using lace yarn and #1 needles. (See, this is a knitting blog)

I aimed. I shot the rattles off the snake’s tail. Now both of us are angry. I wanted those rattles. I aimed again. “Breathe, Monner, breathe”. Dead snake. Ivy tells me, “shoot it again, Dad!” I guess I’m not Monner when I am shooting at snakes.

To: Pull and Smokey (our llamas that were killed by snakes) This one’s for you!

Our crazy lives!

Monner