"There's a moose loose aboot the hoose..."

When I worked at Frankel Steel there was a gang of steel-fitters and welders at the place who had been brought over from steel works in Scotland. This was the mid-eighties, and the UK was a little ahead of us in the de-industrialization race to the bottom. These guys were relegated to the dole back home and were happy to come over for a chance to earn a living.

That lasted a few years, but as the Canadian dollar approached parity with the USD, the competitive advantage for a big fab shop like Frankel, which did much of its work for US projects, gradually declined, and eventually they found themselves on the dole again. By and large they were an agreeable lot, and they had that great accent, that I tried to capture with that quote from a guy whose wife saw a mouse in the house.

I'm thinking of that because this has been a banner year for mice in the house, and although it's not much of a comfort, it ain't just us. Back in the autumn TSC and Home Hardware were both sold out of mouse-traps. We were catching 2-3 per day for at least two months. Thankfully, we seem to be winning; there's only been one mouse caught in the last three weeks.

Unfortunately, our ordeal is not over. Now we've got chipmunks in the house!

As a life-long camping aficionado, I've always enjoyed their company. They are regular companions in campsites across the country. Quite often, within a few hours of settling in, they'll come right up on your picnic table and eat peanuts out of your hand. It's always delightful, and the kids used to love it.

For some reason, the prospect of feeding them peanuts out of my hand while I'm sitting on the couch watching TV isn't nearly so delightful.

More proof that the Olympics are bullshit

The other day when I was at the Tractor Supply Company store picking up one of those flame-throwers for the tent caterpillars, I noticed they had their air pistols on for half price.

Twenty-seven dollars for something that will kill a squirrel, scare a raccoon, and provide many hours of target practice plinking away at empty beer cans.

So today I'm sitting on the front stoop, and I've got various empty beer cans in the trees on the other side of the drive, and I'm engaging in random target shooting, when Junior comes out and gives me a look that says "aren't you a little too old to be playing with a toy gun?"

Well, maybe, but I know for sure what I'm too old for is taking attitude from Junior.

"Hey wise guy, did you know this is an Olympic sport?"

And it is. Air pistol is an Olympic sport. Wrestling is out but air pistol remains an Olympic sport!

And that's just bullshit!

Do caterpillars feel pain?

I want to know, because I've been burning their tents all over Falling Downs.

I figure the research crew that was knitting the caps for the dung beetles should be able to answer this question.

Burning off the caterpillar tents was a spring ritual as far back as I can remember. The folks used to do it with something called a "Lotlampe." That, I assume, was a primitive precursor to the propane torch.

So for several years now I've been fetching a new propane torch at the Tractor Supply Company every spring. The flame is so modest that you pretty much have to roast the caterpillars one at a time. That makes it almost personal. Not to mention incredibly time consuming. You're out on the range for an afternoon and you killed 27 caterpillars.

Hell, my walking stick was more effective.

So I was looking for a more efficient technology, and by god I think I found it! The TSC has a "garden torch" on offer now. I was a little reluctant about the price; you're looking at fifty bucks for a garden torch, minus the propane cylinder.

That's more than double what I pay for a propane soldering rig, including the cylinder.

But I have to say it's been worth it. That four foot wand lets you get a lot of stuff that would otherwise require a ladder. The auto-ignition is pretty sweet too, although I suspect it will fade away after a month or so just like those BBQ lighters.

The good news is that I'm now dispatching the caterpillar population like there's no tomorrow, which I guess there isn't for them. Nevermind 27 caterpillars in an afternoon; I'm now toasting 27 caterpillar tents in an hour!

Thousands upon thousands of caterpillars!

But I've got this nagging doubt at the back of my mind...

Do caterpillars feel pain?

Pot-addled hillbilly cuts off legs with chainsaw

There's snow in the forecast if not on the ground, and now that Lundy has his cows back at the home farm I can access some trees along the fence-rows that I haven't been able to get to all summer.

That turned into the usual shit-show of the sixty foot dead elm wanting to fall to the east when all of my calculations indicated it was going west. That leaves me standing there scratching my head, chainsaw stuck in the kerf, until I do the only thing I can do; pull that sixty footer to the west with my thirty foot tow strap.

I've been meaning to get a good long length of 5/8 rope if TSC every gets around to putting it on sale, but if that's happened I must have missed it.

Last time I was at the Tractor Supply Company store they had a good deal on Tremclad paint. You can put that shit on everything, and they don't call it rust paint for nothing. Yup, you can paint right over rust!

Which reminds me of a story about my old pal George from the drydock, but before I get into that I wanted to mention that I met Billy Morris at the TSC on that trip to buy the Tremclad.

Billy was from Kentucky, and he'd been hired on for the summer by one of the local farmers. Billy was 16, and I was duly impressed when he showed me a picture of his fiancee.

Who the hell has a fiancee at 16?

I managed to get that unwieldy elm to fall to the west with, I am pleased to report, no damage to the truck.

I'm getting better at this, but you never want to think you're too good at it. A sixty foot elm is big and heavy. Once she's on her way down there's no do-overs on the cut.

There's a kind of existential purity about heating your home with wood that you cut down. I suppose it's right next to eating meat from the deer you shot at hunting season. There's something primitive about it, but at the same time you can't help but feel good about it.

I was a bit taken aback at Billy's fiancee and all that implied, and then he showed me a picture of his 14 year old sister. And her fiancee.

What the hell?

Hey boy, how you kids coming up with these fiancees?

The internet!

So George is the guy who built a beautiful 3,000 square foot home in St. Martin, overlooking the Bay of Fundy, and the day I was there me and him and a couple of lads from the shipyard got seriously shit-faced on George's home made beer. I believe he had a jug of screech at hand as well. That's when George told us about his plans for the house.

Now the house was there. We were sitting in it. We'd had the grand tour. But George had a plan.

Next year, God willing, he was going to jack 'er up and put a foundation under it!

Well fuck me!

My four year old Stihl put in a good afternoon. I went through two tanks of gas and had a full load in the back of the truck when I came back to the house. That's about a week of warmth in the dead of winter. God willing, global warming will keep winter warm and short, but that isn't something we should count on just yet.

Firewood, like guns and condoms, are in that category where it's better to have and not need it than the vice versa.

One day I asked Billy how the Morris clan ended up here in the Bruce all the way from Kentucky. Oh he says, Mom met this guy on the internet...

So one Monday George announces he did a body job on his truck on the weekend. We're deep in the bowels of one of the frigates we're building for the Royal Canadian Navy. So deep that you can hear a black-hat clanking down the ladders ten minutes before he gets there. A dog-fuckers paradise.

A body job on your rusty old truck in a weekend? Do tell, George.

"Well, while the missus was in the mall I slipped over to the TSC and got a roll of duct tape and a can of Tremclad. The bright white Tremclad matches my truck perfect, so I just taped over the rust holes and then gave 'er a spray with the Tremclad."

A couple weeks ago I ran into a buddy who has a house down at McCullough Lake. He uses it for the summer and rents it out September to June. I did the customary "how's things" routine.

"Oh by fuck, you wouldn't believe it. I had these fucking hillbillys in there, folks from Kentucky. Paid rent for three months and then nothing. When they finally moved out I find out they've cut the stairs down, the fucking stairs to the second floor. The railing and the stairs! You can't even go upstairs now without a ladder!"

"Was the name Morris?"

"Ya! How the fuck do you know that?"

"Just a hunch."

I was hand bombing the firewood into the woodshed. Got a couple of old dining room chairs back there. They'd make good kindling I thought.

So I fired up the Stihl one more time and cut the legs off.

It's not hoarding; I just have a lot of stuff

The Farm Manager has been on my case to organize the garage. By "organize" she means clean up or clear out.

That's a tall order. Damn near overwhelming. In fact, I dare say I am overwhelmed.

What's driving this is the need to put the Mustang Fifty away for the winter. I had thought the barn, but that doesn't make sense when there's a garage right by the house. Trouble is, the garage is full.

I've been out here planning the clean up all afternoon. Eventually I had to bring the laptop out here, partly out of curiosity whether the Wi-Fi reaches this far, and partly because to plan this job properly I'm going to have to generate a couple of spreadsheets and maybe a power-point presentation.

That's my story anyway.

The garage collection has in actuality spilled out from the garage. Just for an example, the snow-blower, which will be called upon in the first blizzard of the year, has spend months sitting in the weather in front of the garage, while at least two non-operable lawnmowers take up space inside.

That simply makes no sense whatsoever.

Not that those lawnmowers need to be inoperable. Just need a little tinkering. But there are only so many hours in a day.

Then there's a very substantial NordicTrack treadmill. This is a veritable Cadillac of treadmills. This puppy will do everything short of cooking your breakfast. You can even hook it up to your computer. I have no clue why anyone would want to do that, but it's got the connection ports just in case.

It fell out of use even long before one of the hounds chewed the cord off it. I put on a new cord about a year ago. Not that anyone has used it since, but it's nice to know it works.

There's a drum kit. My 200 watt bass amp. Another hand-built amp I use with the harp. A couple of guitars... three or four if you count the acoustics. The DeWalt generator I bought to replace the one the dog ate. A big bin of assorted Hotwheel tracks and accessories. Another bin of Lego paraphernalia.

All of this might come in handy for the day we have to entertain grandchildren.

There are many boxes of books and notes that are the residue of a long ago sociology degree.

An air hockey table that glows in the dark, in case you want to play air hockey in the dark.

Three bicycles. My daughter's little starter bike with a basket on the front. Grandchild material again. My Raleigh road bike that is so old it was actually built in England. Junior's mountain bike that he has long since outgrown.

That Raleigh still has the mounting hardware on it from the child seat that used to be mounted over the back tire. We must have done hundreds of miles of bike rides. We used it till Junior was maybe getting a little too heavy for it, because one day we set out and the first corner I took, the seat toppled off the back of the bike and Junior did a face plant on the street. The mounting hardware pulled right through the plastic seat.

That wasn't a very good day.

There's a vintage Toshiba television from back when they were experimenting with Carver stereo sound systems on their TVs. Nobody in there right mind would ever throw that out. It's actually great for music videos.

Maybe someday there will be a grandchild who is into music videos.

There's a kayak hanging from the ceiling that hasn't come down since we put it up there.

And tools... tools like you wouldn't believe. I've taken a couple of stabs at getting the tools organized, but to no avail. The job just overwhelms me. I start out well. One tool box for screwdrivers. One tool box for wrenches. One tool box for sockets. One tool box for miscellaneous, and so on.

Eventually I just end up with eight or nine toolboxes of miscellaneous, and it's inevitably easier to stop in at TSC and buy a number two Robertson screwdriver or a 5/16 socket than it is to root through all those toolboxes.

The last tool I bought was an inch and 3/8 socket to fit the hydraulic tank on the backhoe. It was too small, so I took it back an exchanged it for a inch and 7/16. That was too small as well, but I got the hydraulic tank open with a pipe wrench, which I could have done in the first place. In the meantime, that inch and 7/16 socket has disappeared into one of those tool boxes, so I can't even take it back for a refund, unless I spend an afternoon looking for it.

Then I'd have to look for the receipt... Better to just leave well enough alone and take comfort in knowing that if I ever need an inch and 7/16 socket I've got one.

Somewhere.

There's a few boxes of stuff we inherited from Uncle Murray.

There's a store-quality clothes rack behung with fur coats. The real stuff; mink, chinchilla, fox. Back in the day the Farm Manager's father was a furrier, one of the traditional Jewish trades. Thanks to Brigette Bardot and PETA she can't wear that stuff anywhere, but out of respect for her father we'll never throw it out.

And there's more, lot's more, but you can see what I'm up against.

But at least the Wi-Fi works in the garage.

How lawyers are wrecking civilization

The stupidity implied by the above picture cannot be directly attributed to lawyers.

But let me explain.

The guy who parked Allis in this mudhole and then couldn't get her out was guilty of one thing; he didn't have the old brain switch in the "on" position when he made the decision to pull into the corner field.

After sending the back-hoe operator packing I spent the better part of an afternoon trying to get her out, only to have it dug in deeper than ever by the time nightfall set in.

Had to spend a few days coming up with a plan. In the meantime I had to bear the scorn of everybody in the neighborhood driving by and tut-tutting about how that was ever gonna come out of there.

I was able to at least sow seeds of doubt by claiming that Allis-in-the-mud was an "art installation". I called it "Spring Thaw". Pretty sure nobody really believed that, but it kept them quiet for a few days.

I'd almost had Allis out of the mud at one point but I ran out of solid ground that I could claw into and drag her out.

That's not quite true. I could have clawed into the road. Unfortunately the Township guys are sharp enough to figure out that there might be a connection between the tore-up road and my back-hoe parked behind the barn a couple hundred yards away.

I'd noticed that the hydraulics seemed a little out of mojo at the far ends of the boom's reach and picked up a five gallon pail of no.32 hydraulic fluid at the Tractor Supply Company to top things up.

That's when I noticed the warning on the side of the pail. It shows a baby  bottoms-up in a bucket of hydraulic fluid. In three languages I'm warned that "small children can drown in small amounts of liquid."

Great! I'm trying to focus on getting Allis out of the mud and now my already-stressed intellectual resources are preoccupied with babies drowning in buckets.

Hell, if one baby can drown in a bucket, how many could be lost in the mud-hole? Why are they haranguing me with such self-evident nonsense?

Then I realized; it's the lawyers!

They have to bring up every possible eventuality that might ever occur when someone somewhere uses their product with their brain switch in the "off" position.

Hey, if your missus is running a day-care in the back of your heavy equipment maintenance facility, one of the tots could crawl away from day-care corner and end up head-first in a pail of no. 32 hydraulic fluid.

Then somebody might sue.

So the real purpose of all these silly warnings is to make sure people can wander through their days with never so much as a passing nod to something called "common sense".

Lawyers are killing common sense.

Lucy ate my Wellys

Regular readers are well acquainted with the hounds here at Falling Downs.

Lucy is the black-orange brindle with the cropped tail, the pup.

Boomer is the old girl.

Lucy is still in the chew-everything-in-sight stage of puppydom. She's done in an old Bible, a stack of 70's era car magazines, and a variety of extension cords.

And my TSC Wellys.

I'm as partial to boots as Lucy is. Except I don't eat them. I just wear them on my feet. Wear them till they fall apart.

For example, I've got a pair of Salomon hiking boots I bought in Calgary in '99. Still pull them on every morning when I do my 5k with Lucy and Boomer. Socks hanging out the sides, they're well past their "waterproof" guarantee, but I just can't give them up.

Just too damned comfortable.

Came from a shoe store in a Calgary mall. The store was having a going-out-of-business sale the day before I was going to hike up the glacier behind Lake Louise with my kids.

It was a purchase meant to be.

Not much good in the wet though, not anymore, what with your socks poking out the sides. That's why I had the Wellys. For those wet occasions.

With the late winter and the early spring we've been having more than our share of those around here, and the other day I'm looking for the Wellys.

Put them on the shelf right between the Bible and those old car books.

Can't find a trace of them anywhere.

Even when it's a month late, winter is always a complete surprise

It's the last week in December. Out of nowhere there's a six inch dump of snow overnight.

Who knew? Snow? In December? Who has ever heard of such a thing?

Needless to say, no one is prepared for such a surprise. Every tire store in town suddenly has a weeks worth of backlog on having snow tires installed. Many of them are sold out. Even Walmart is sold out.

Remember when TSC was remaindering their last snow-blowers back in March, at half price? You thought about it. Scratched your head and thought about it some more. Nah... you decided against saving that six or seven hundred dollars. After all, what with global warming, maybe you'll never see snow again.

Ha! Now you wake up with six inches of snow, that piece of crap 1980's era snow-blower you've been thinking about replacing won't start, and you hustle down to TSC or Sears or Walmart. Half price? No, in fact they're sold out and back-ordered. Really back ordered. If you put your money down today your snow-blower will be waiting for you mid-January.

In the meantime, you might as well pick up a snow shovel while you're there. You can't find the one you bought last year.

It's under the snow somewhere.

"Some" assembly required

I should have known.

At some level I guess I was in denial. When I picked up the 22 ton log-splitter at TSC a couple of weeks ago I somehow expected that when I opened up the 2' by 5' shipping crate a fully formed ready-to-go log-splitter would be smiling back at me.

Due to weather and inertia and other factors, it took me till today to pry that crate open, and did I ever get a shock! They've done a great job of cramming all the various parts in there, but none of them are attached one to another. Some assembly required.

No kidding.

Now, I don't want to quibble with the good folks at TSC, but nowhere on the journey to this piece of machinery was there any mention of assembly. Not in the flyer, not on the shipping crate; the point-of-purchase personnel didn't mention it. I thought, buy it, take it home, split wood.

Instead, I open this crate and there's a dozen independently bubble-wrapped packages jammed in there. Right away I've got a problem. The snow is flying up here at Falling Downs, so I have to make room in the garage for the assembly project.

I've noticed over the years that no matter how big the garage is you never have room to actually do any garage-worthy work. I had to move the drum kit, the treadmill, the snow-blower, three lawnmowers, and that vintage Toshiba TV with the Carver sound system before I had a little work space.

Then I figured I needed an extra set of hands, so I called Junior away from the X-box. That was an adventure in itself. His first observation is "it's cold out here."

Yes, Einstein, it is cold out here. It's called winter in Canada. Go get a coat.

Junior gets his coat, and he's back complaining about how it's still cold. Must say he was handy in getting the bigger bits of the puzzle off the truck, but holy moly, kids today struggle with the simplest things. "Make sure you put a flat washer in there."

"What's that?"

"That's a round piece of metal with a hole in it."

They can type 60 words per minute with just their thumbs but they don't know from a flat washer?

"Oh-oh, this washer's broken."

"That's called a lock-washer."

Explained to him the principle of how a lock-washer works. Didn't seem to impress him that much. Nevertheless we made slow steady progress on the assembly project, in spite of the constant whining about how his toes are cold. Don't need your toes to do this I told him. That didn't impress him either.

The most important thing I hope I modeled for him was that we got the damn thing together without so much as taking the instruction manual out of it's plastic covering. He learned about bearings and cotter pins and lock washers and so much other stuff, but the most important thing he learned is that the instruction manual is something the manufacturer throws in there just to cover their butt.

So it's all put together. Just need to run into town and pick up some hydraulic fluid. Oh, and hook up the hydraulic hoses of course. I kind of left it there. Four connections to make and I have to say I'm not 100% sure what goes where. Gonna have a little peek in the instruction manual.

But not while Junior's around.

The zen of splitting firewood

I have thus far managed to avoid the use of a mechanically assisted wood splitter. By mechanically assisted I mean those rigs that you attach to the 3-point hitch on the tractor, those rigs that come with their own power source, like a 12 horse Briggs & Stratton, and those little electric jobs that you plug into the wall. Instead, I have been splitting the wood with a twelve pound maul.

I've used all that other stuff, and yes, if  "efficiency" is your God, I suppose one of those mechanical alternatives would be the way to go. But no. I'm staying old school.

At Falling Downs the wood-shed is also the dog-shed. It's the way-station between the trailer or the truck parked out back, and the basement where I keep this winter's warmth. It's also where the dogs shit. So before I get all gung-ho on an afternoon of wood-splitting, I have to clean up the dog shit.

Depending on how long it's been since I had an afternoon of wood work, the dog shit may or may not look like dog shit. Dog shit tends to mold up pretty quick. A bit of damp kindling may take a little longer, but at some point their trajectories of putrification cross, so sometimes you don't know if you're picking up dog shit or a piece of kindling. Of course once you pick it up, you know right away.

Anyway, you don't split kindling, so leaving aside the dog shit that looks like firewood, lets get back to the main theme. There's an asthetic rythym to splitting wood. It's poetry with a really big axe. I first figured this out when I was house-sitting for helpful Herb. May not have mentioned it, but aside from house-sitting and shooting squirrels I was expected to split a winter's worth of firewood. That's where I first encountered the zen of wood-splitting.

Like I said, there's a rythym to it. You have to learn not to fight the axe. The axe becomes part of you. You become the axe. You pick it up and let it swing back and forth. At the tail end of a swing, whether a back or a forth, you draw the handle skyward. You wait a moment until it reaches its maximum skyward trajectory.

Then you drive the fucker to the center of the earth.

That's really the only point at which you're applying serious muscle. You need to visualize the center of the earth. At this point all you're doing is aiming. Try not to hit the heart of the piece you're aiming at. A couple inches either side of the heart will split much easier. On a good day a good swing will go through the target on the first go.

So I've been doing a lot of that. Herb never had a twelve pounder. That makes the initial to and fro motion that much more important. Twelve pounds ain't a lot of weight, but you put it on the end of a four foot stick and it gets pretty heavy pretty fast. So you have to work with it, not against it. On a good swing, or series of swings, you get that satisfying crack of wood flying in all directions. You lean forward, put another piece on the chopping stump, go with the flow of the twelve pound maul on the end of that four foot stick, and you get the satisfying crack of wood flying in all directions. You lean forward, put another piece on the chopping stump, go with the flow of the twelve pound maul and there you go again. And again. And again. And it's zen. The zen of wood-splitting. You are the wood. You are the maul. You are gonna be warm in February.

Been at it for a month and some. Every once in awhile you get the maul stuck. Totally fucks up the rythym. Zen breakdown. I give those pieces a second chance. If they don't play along on the second chance I put them aside. Got the woodshed half full now of stuff I had to put to the side. That's two or three months worth of warmth.

Gonna see if they still have the 22-ton wood-splitter on sale at TSC next week.