The Storage Building Story

This will be an interlude from dairy cooking while I cook up another story about my kitchen adventures. I actually wrote this well over a year and a half ago and friends found it entertaining...husband did not find it so entertaining for some reason, so if you know him and see him, just keep mum about it. Thanks! Ha!

It all started about 2 1/2 years ago when we realized that this modular home was not designed with any type of storage in mind. Down on the back of the ridge, built on a slope, my DH had a small 8'X10' building that he had constructed about 20 years ago, back before he had the sawmill or dairy. He'd hand sawn all the boards from oak and built it as kind of an office/hangout back in the woods. He had a small old sofa and dresser in there. Well, he figured he would move it up here for us to use as storage, though he was nervous about the whole process and kept putting it off. But he finally bit the bullet and moved it; quite a process involving the bulldozer, the dump-bed truck, and a couple different tractors with various attachments.

When it was finally in place my job started; and a nasty job it has been. The building hadn't been used in close to 15 years and had become the abode of generations of spiders and packrats. It was FULL of acorns, leaves, sticks and all kinds of nasty stuff. DH had had phone books and manuals and other boxes of things in there, but most of it was trashed. We had to haul the sofa and dresser out so I could get in there and clean. We did that on a Saturday, so they were sitting out all weekend until I was able to get to them on a Monday. The bottom of the sofa had a storage area for blankets, but it was all jammed with leaves and acorns and rat commas. We couldn't even open the dresser.

I started cleaning out the place; moving the few boxes and other stuff. I kept finding these weird looking spiders, but not being too freaked out by spiders I just squished them and moved on. Then DH comes in and sees me squish one and says; "Oh, that was a fiddle-back, otherwise known as a brown recluse." Great! Talk about the heebee jeebees. The place is crawling with them. I dreamed about them all night that night. Ick.

On Monday afternoon we took the old sofa and dresser out to the calf pasture for burning and burial, since they are way beyond repair; just soaked with rat urine...etc. But first DH thought that there might be something worth saving in the dresser drawers, so he gets the crow bar and pries them open one at a time. The first three are just CRAMMED with acorns and fluff from the sofa as well as tons of rat commas. Then we go to the fourth drawer and suddenly DH hops up yelling; "There he goes, there he goes!" And there went the hugest rat I have ever seen; he was as big as Matilda the kitten, at least as long, including his tail. DH said it was about a foot including the tail.

Well, DH is never one to suffer vermin to live so he just hurls the drawer at the rat; acorns, fluff and rat commas flying all over. Darn! He misses. So frantically he looks around for something, he grabs a large dead branch from the ground and the chase is on; around and around in a circle of maybe 20 yards. The poor rat is hopping and scrambling in unfamiliar territory, going in circles in the tall weeds. Not to be outmaneuvered is my gallant husband, who is galloping and scrambling around after it, whacking around in the weeds with the branch. I am standing in one spot alternately covering my eyes and watching the spectacle, yelling; "Oh, the poor thing, eeeww, there he goes, get him, get him!" The sad ending finally came; victory for DH, who stood there puffing and steaming in the cold fall air.

Comments

Donna. W said…
Rats scare me to death.
jel said…
lol!!!!!!!

U me I can't say any thing to him!

I will try to keep quite , but you know how I like to talk! ;)

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