Us Varmints
I just met my new neighbor to the north of me. He bought the old farm and 17 acres when the bank foreclosed on it. After the recession of ’07 hit, my previous neighbor watched his housebuilding business dry up like a Dust Bowl swimming pool. He never was one to save a dime for a rainy day so when the drought hit, he was goner, just another casualty on Wall Street’s gamble to enrich themselves.
My new neighbor and I met over the fence line where he’ll soon be pulling out the old 7 strand barbed wire and updating to a mesh fence, keep his dog and horses in and varmints out. Hopefully I’m not in the latter category. When I first came here the woods was pretty much unbroken from Dallman Road down to the Head. The cattle days being pretty much played out, there wasn’t much need of fences except for an occasional perimeter around a vegetable garden to keep the deer out. Other than me and Colton, not many folks ventured into the nettle barrens. Fences would’ve been a frivolous use of money and money was way too hard to come by.
Well, the Open Range is gone now around here. You can still wander the interior from me to the Head if you know your way. Still find duckponds and an occasional streambed lined with swamp cabbage, even a few hidden houses obviously off the grid and built without permits or government oversight. There’s a few old homesteads disappeared except for their shadow in a periwinkle bed or a cluster of daffodils gone wild. There’s even a 1950 Studebaker parked up a ravine near the last old growth cedar on the South End. No skeleton sits behind the wheel. The driver’s probably back in the salmonberry jungle, still looking for a gas station.
Good fences, Robert Frost said ironically, make good neighbors. My neighbor was worried I might not agree. And, of course, I don’t. My world shrunk another 17 acres, and before long me and the deer will have to share what’s left. I’m just hoping they remain vegetarians.
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Ah, but do you want their dog yahoo-ing next to your bedroom?