Chapter 7: Critters in the Camper

THANK YOU!

Welcome back for chapter 7: Critters in the camper!  I really want to say thank you first of all, for taking the time to follow our story.  I started out doing this to fill some time and get some of this craziness down on paper. However, somewhere along the way, it became something I really enjoy and look forward to. 

With the help of loyal readers like you (wow, that sounded like a public radio pledge drive fishing line…) and others out there, I might actually be able to make some money doing this. Crazy right?  But I need your help to get the word out.  Anytime someone shares or recommends the blog to friends (or comments on the posts) it really helps out the blog.  So, THANK YOU so much to those of you who are already doing that and to those who might do it later!!  The farm thanks you too! It becomes more clear each day, that breathing farm life into this place, which we have fallen head over heels for, and making it the regenerative nirvana we dream of will require a little creative thinking!  

Now back to our programming.  Maybe this is a pledge drive…

There have been several references throughout the chapters hinting at the joys of living in a camper with furry critters.  However, I don’t think the magnitude of the situation has been adequately expressed.  You may have wondered just how it is that we manage to cohabitate in such a small space with a large dog and a cat, and probably most questionably, a cat litter box.  To be completely transparent, the answer is, we have no choice.  That wasn’t the eloquent, tidy response you were hoping for?  Well, the path we have chosen isn’t for wimps and it definitely ain’t tidy!  These furry, stinking mess-makers are family, and as such there was really no other option worthy of consideration.  However, I must stress the importance of scooping the litter box every day 😉

In chapter 4: Life goes on, I made the choice to adopt a more relaxed view of the world. I loosened my grip on control a smidge and I try to find the humor in it. Some days it is more of a bitch than others.

The stinkhorn incident 

As avid hikers, a major reason for moving out here is the ability to go for hikes right out the front door.  Every morning, and most evenings, we head out for walks.  Sometimes we follow one of the many weaving dirt roads, other times we explore the property.  One particular summer evening, we walked the perimeter of our property near one of the creeks. It was shady and cool and Roscoe zoomed around and around us happily and stupidly. Suddenly, he dove off the path into the swampy weeds. 

When we caught up with him, he was ecstatically rolling around on the ground.  He would stand up and then dive in headfirst, again and again.  Once upon a time, we found this behavior amusing, but this wasn’t our first goat rodeo.  A dog, enthusiastically rolling around on the ground is likely not reveling in the feel of the cool grass on his back.  This, folks, is a signal he has found a scent he wants to douse himself in. And it’s not the bucolic scent of wildflowers.  Some of the most coveted and sought-after scent producing items in the dog world include poop (various types), rotting carcasses, hot garbage, assorted fungi, slime, and more.  The more putrid and revolting, the more value it holds.

When we were finally able to get him off the thing, it was obliterated.  We couldn’t even identify what category from the above list it belonged to.  Roscoe had hit the doggy Powerball stinkpot.  Never in all of the years of pet ownership have I had the misfortune of smelling such a repellently fetid stink.  My eyes welled up and began to water and I immediately started gagging.  Just the memory of it triggers the gag reflex. 

The work of the devil?

Whatever it was, he had worked it thoroughly and deeply into his coat.  The substance covered his face and neck. The nooks and crannies of his remote collar were jammed so completely that my first instinct was to splash it with holy water and bury it in a deep hole.  His everyday, leather collar was hopelessly marinated and never made it back into the camper.  The fun was over for the night and we turned and headed back to camp to begin decontamination.  We washed, rinsed, and repeated until we ran out of shampoo, and the rain collection trough ran dry.  In spite of our efforts, we were unable to completely unstink that dog.

Able to breathe again, my inner curious nerd took over. The smell was unlike anything I’ve smelled before, so I suspected it might belong to the fungus family.  After a little Google researching, I discovered Phallacea. (I’ll let you figure out the Latin root of that name!)  The stinkhorn family.  Yep, that was it.  This foul, obscene group of mushrooms that disperse their spores using a putrid stench to attract flies…and red hound dog mixes too.  Truly gross but seriously clever.  Undeterred by our repulsion, Roscoe has found and ascended to stinkhorn heaven at least twice more since then.  So far, Dawn soap seems to be the best unstinking agent on the market.

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While we’re on the subject of Roscoe…

I’ve made reference to the mud issues associated with having a dog in a camper, but I would be remiss to neglect describing other joys as well.  This particular hare-brained, Roger Rabbit-like dog, while 100% angel incarnate, is several doughnuts short of a dozen.  

He has a very special toy to which he has bonded at the deepest level.  His soulmate is a floppy, dirty, well-worn tug toy long eviscerated of its stuffing.  After mauling it into submission he became overcome with remorse, made it his “squishy” for life. He carries it wherever he goes.  He sleeps with it nestled under his head. Dutifully, he tries to bring it outside the camper with him every time we leave.  

Each morning he greets us by vigorously wagging his tail. However, he is able to maintain this social nicety for only a matter of seconds. Unable to contain himself, he sniffs out his “squishy” and thrusts it into our faces or laps for inspection.  

It’s adorable…for 5 minutes.  Imagine, you’re on your laptop, deeply entrenched in the fascinating material you’re generating for your blog, when suddenly the smelly, dirty, toy lands on the keyboard.  Or, you’re taking a well-earned nap on the couch when the nasty thing lands on your face.  Oh, and there was the time he thought we might trade him our dinner for the toy.  After tossing it up onto the table, he politely sat down and waited for us to hold up our end of the deal.

A simple dog with complex needs

Roscoe is such a snowflake; I wager he would perish in less than a day alone on the streets or in the wild.  In addition to being a complete boob, he is also unable to generate his own body heat.  Having spent his whole life (minus walks and such) in a comfortable, climate-controlled house, we didn’t fully appreciate his inability to acclimate. 

The temperature dropped below 70 degrees for the first time, and we noticed him shivering near the door.   We thought, Wow, he must really have to pee, and rushed him outside.  He relieved himself but the shuddering persisted.  We watched nervously as it continued through the night and into the next morning.  At that point, I was starting to wonder if something was medically wrong with him.  I covered him with blankets just to see what would happen. It was but a minute before the shivering melted into snoring.  Deep in dreamland, he was catching up on the hours of sleep he must have lost trying to stay alive during the night. 

If he was already having this much trouble, what was going to happen when it actually got cold?  I took to scouring pet supply websites and online retailers looking for a doggy slanket, sweater, pajamas, or something that he could wear overnight to keep from freezing solid.  I discovered that the availability of warm clothing for anything bigger than a cockapoo is shockingly sparse.  Surely Roscoe is not the only large dog to ever suffer the effects of the cold? 

Oh my stars, how precious

Eventually, I found a jaunty red plaid jacket for walks, a heavy winter coat for the frigid months ahead, and a ridiculous Sherpa-lined, pocket-like bed for him to nestle into at night.  Figuring that would be a total waste of money, we have been pleasantly surprised to find that he loves it.  His burrowing skills, like his survival skills, are embarrassing.  As much as Roscoe defies Darwin’s theory at every level, we couldn’t imagine this chapter of our lives without his comical antics and quirks.

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And what about the cat?

Boots, or King Bootsie as we lovingly refer to him, is like family also. However, his capers just don’t incite the same gush of adoration as Roscoe’s.  As the senior citizen of the family, he has earned a place of respect.  Regardless, he insists on telling anyone within earshot that he is horribly neglected and egregiously underappreciated. 

As a strictly indoor cat, it has become hard to keep him entertained. His royal highness turned his nose up at the mouse that slipped in through a previously unplugged hole. He protests this heinous prison sentence each night. Like a lion voted off the Serengeti, he yowls mournfully while tromping through the camper with his furry, little paws.  Once we’re asleep, he pounces onto our guts, knocking the wind out of us.  We shoot up out of sleep, gasping for breath and he sits, calculatingly, just out of reach. 

In an effort to mollify his royal discomfort Byron designed and built a scratching post/window perch that the tiny demon refuses to use.  Instead, he continues his trademarked enhanced sleep deprivation techniques. He claws up the carpet until we rouse enough to stumble through the dark camper after him.  He works, tirelessly through the night to ensure we know how dissatisfied he is with the accommodations. 

Shitcake anyone?

Just before dawn Boots adds the icing to the unsavory cake he bakes from scratch each night.  He hops into the litter box, which we keep in the bathroom, which is basically in our bedroom, which is basically in the kitchen. After scratching around angrily for a solid five minutes he finally does his business.  As the permeating bouquet wakes us from what little sleep we might have managed to steal, we are forced out of bed to begin the day.  Only then does he allow himself to rest.  His mission accomplished, he nestles deep into the down comforter on our bed and settles in for his own uninhibited 16-18-hour slumber.

Recently, he has taken to shooting out of the camper door like a greased pig when my arms are stacked high with laundry baskets.  He has a keen sense of the moment I am more likely to fall and break my neck than to reach down and grab his little ass.  He squirts out the door and darts under the camper, just out of reach.  Or so he thinks.  Knowing that death for an outdoor-naïve, unsavvy, tiny old cat is but a passing truck or circling hawk away, we crawl after him each time, dragging him back out by the scruff of his neck.  When Byron is forced to be the one to go after him, there is a spectacular showdown of wills, fury and profanity.

You love him like family, you say?

When you say it like that, it does have a bit of a Stockholm Syndrome-ey feel to it…  Nevertheless, he’s part of the family and will be until the end.  Which shouldn’t be too much longer, not that I’m counting…  But seriously, we will all be much happier when he has a house to rule again.

The new addition

Recently, we added a new member to the family!  Well, “added” isn’t exactly the right word.  To be more precise, we have been adopted or abducted by a mockingbird who is crazier than a hoot owl.  About a month ago a brash and rowdy mockingbird appeared in the hedge outside the camper.  New to the area, he quickly succeeded in chasing all of the resident birds out of the hedge claiming it and its wealth of ripe pokeberries as his own.  

He immediately began gorging himself on the dark purple berries and then started acting even odder.  I wasn’t sure if the berries were having a psychotropic effect on him, whether he was drunk or just plain mad but he soon began feverishly attacking the camper.  My hypothesis is that he saw his own reflection in the windows. As the newly self-crowned king of the hedgerow had no choice but to smite the challenger who lusted after his thorny throne.

Then things really got weird.  Gorged on purple berries he then began to cover everything in purple poop including himself.  Seriously, he dyed himself purple.  Despite being sure that Purple Pete (what else could we name him?) wouldn’t last the first night the way he was flinging himself at the windows, he carried on like that for days.  By the end of the week, nearly every window and the whole backside of the camper had purple goo oozing down it.  

Never in all my days…

While shocked that he was still living after the ceaseless, obsessive raving, we found his valor and heart endearing.  None the less, in an effort to quash the chaos and get some peace, Byron created a trash monster out of a cellophane bag and some of the hay bale netting we have in abundance and hung it from the bird’s favorite spot at the end of the camper.  After an hour of silence, we thought the tactic had been successful and we breathed a sigh of relief.  It was right about then that we heard that familiar rapping coming from the other end of the camper.  The bird was fully nuts!! 

At that point, we pretty much gave up.  Soon we’d be moving the camper up near the road where we could connect to the newly installed electric service. We figured he’d be glad he’d finally chased off his rival and forget all about us.  Yet another incorrect assumption.  After a few days in our new spot, the telltale tap, tap, tapping on our bedroom window began again.  No way!! 

Yes, way.  Purple Pete had packed up and followed us 400 feet up the driveway.  He had abdicated pokeberry palace and perched on the roof of our car. The attempted usurper now peered at him through the sunroof of the car.  His attack alternated from the roof of the car to the camper windows.  Slowly, the purple hue faded as the pokeberries worked their way out of his system. The vigor with which he attacked seemed to ebb a bit as well.  Eventually relenting to part-time attacks, he began to split his time and attention between the camper and the precious hedgerow. 

Immortal beloved

We still see Pete every day.  Most mornings, while waiting for us to emerge for our morning walk, he perches on the roof rack of the car. He seems to have lost interest almost completely in the camper but still holds a bit of a grudge toward the car’s sunroof. Though no longer completely purple, he will forever be Purple Pete to us.  He has made such an impression on our lives over the last month, that we decided to honor and immortalize him by dubbing our future farm The Purple Mockingbird Farm.  Quite clearly this is his place!

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