Getting Used To Snowflake

“Mom! Mom! Can we go to a rodeo Saturday?”

I smiled as Krissi climbed into the car. We'd only lived in Snowflake for a week, but apparently the country atmosphere was already rubbing off onto my girls.

“A real bull-rider came to our school today, and he gave us free tickets to the rodeo,” Krissi quickly explained. “It's on Saturday. Can we go?”

“I guess, if you really want to,” I told her. “But I didn't know you liked cowboy stuff.”

“I don't. But the tickets are free, and all the other kids want to go.”

Living in Snowflake sure was an adventure. It seemed that every day I discovered another reason for being glad we had moved there. I loved the trees, green grass, and flowers. I loved the hills and contoured landscape. I loved the quaint old homes in the old part of town, and our modern, new rental house. I loved the smell of smoke in the air on crisp mornings when I went for a walk, and the balmy sunshine in the afternoons, so different from the hot desert.

One afternoon I popped into the local bank to open a checking account. I happened to look out the window next to the service desk, and had to catch my breath. Right there, outside the window, was rocky hill, just like at our cabin, and I lived here!

The rodeo turned out to be lots of fun, even though Krissi only had one free ticket, so we had to pay for Kami and I. Kami loved watching the horses, Krissi enjoyed the clowns, and we all tried to count how long the cowboys stayed on their bulls. Most of all, I enjoyed watching the people in their western finery. There was only one thing wrong with the day; it was cold!

I couldn't believe it. It was only the middle of October. We'd spent the week before sweating on the beach at Rocky Point, and down in the Valley it was still over 100 degrees every day, but up here in the mountains was a different story. Part of the problem was the girls and I were wearing cool, summer shirts and shorts. If we'd worn western jeans and shirts like everyone else it wouldn't have been so bad. The biggest problem, though, was the wind. Combined with the cool temperatures, it cut through us like ice.

I made myself a new rule that day: always keep blankets in the trunk of my car as long as I live in Snowflake. I can't tell you how many times I have been grateful for them in the last six years!

Cabin Critters

We ran into all kinds of animals and creatures up at the cabin.  Some of them were really awesome, but some of them we didn't like at all, like the snakes. 

One day Dad took Phillip and Keith out hiking through the woods.  They found a rattlesnake behind a fallen log.  They threw rocks at it, and when it was dead Dad cut it’s rattles off and brought them home to show us girls, (as if we really wanted to see such gross things!)  They really were kind of fascinating, although I refused to hold them at first.  They made a really strange sound when we shook them, a sound that caused my heart to beat fast and my stomach to feel a little queasy.  Dad explained that we should always listen for that sound, and if we heard it to walk away!  The problem was, there were also cicada bugs that lived in the trees all around the cabin.  They made a noise that was kind of similar to a rattlesnake, or at least to the sound we heard when we shook the rattles, so for a long time Linda and I were scared to leave the cabin.  Dad also reminded us to always look on the other side of rocks or logs before we stepped over them.

             

             Daddy long leg spiders seemed to grow especially big at the cabin.  Linda liked to catch them and let them crawl over her hands.  She said they tickled.  Phillip liked to catch them because he said he was going to pull off their legs and he liked to hear us girls complain. One morning I woke up because something was tickling my face.  It was a daddy long legs walking across my forehead!  Yuck!  None of us were scared of them, though, until Keith told us that he'd learned in school that they were the most poisonous  spiders in the world.  The only good thing was that since they didn’t have mouths they couldn’t bite us.

“Don’t squish one on an open cut,” he warned us, though, “because then you will die!”

Grandpa Russell grew the best corn up at the cabin.  But it was so good raccoons liked to eat it, too.  They would sneak into the garden at night to steal the fresh ears, and in the morning grandpa would find their little footprints all over the ground.

Grandpa and Uncle Tillis tried all sorts of things to keep the critters out of the yard.  Uncle Tillis set traps for the coons.  One morning we came downstairs to find that he had caught a raccoon in one of his traps.  We all crowded around to see the little animal.  It was a beautiful creature, his fur soft and shiny, but he was not happy!  He had the bluest eyes, but they were shooting green sparks out of them as he barred his teeth and growled fiercely at everyone. 

Grandpa and Uncle Tillis tried stringing an electric fence around our property to keep the coons out.  The black wire stretched between the fence posts and looked pretty scary to me, but it didn’t seem to bother the raccoons at all.

At last Grandpa brought up Duke, our dog.  Uncle Ray was a Veterinarian, and one of his patients gave Duke to him because they were disappointed with him.  Duke was a big, black Doberman pincher, and he should have been a good watch dog, but he was too nice.  Instead of growling at strangers and barking, he licked everyone and jumped up on people to kiss them.  We loved Duke, but our yard in the Valley really wasn't big enough for a large dog like him to be happy. 

Grandpa thought Duke would be just the ticket to keep the coons out of his corn.  He built him a house under the tree house, close to the garden.  Then he attached Duke’s chain to the clothes line, so he could run up and down the yard.  The only problem was, Duke was afraid of the coons!  He would hide in his dog house and not even chase after them when they came into the yard!

One night when we were in bed we heard lots of dogs barking and men shouting down by the creek.  Dad walked down to see what was going on and came back upstairs in a hurry to get Keith. 

“There are some coon hunters from Christopher Creek down at the swimming hole,” he said.  “They have been chasing a raccoon, and he’s up in a big old sycamore tree.  They’re trying to shoot him, but they’ve run out of bullets.  I told them they could borrow some of yours, but they said you can try to shoot it yourself if you want to.”

 Keith was really excited.  He wasn't yet ten years old, but he loved target practicing with his 22, and he was a pretty good shot.  He went down the hill with Dad and he shot that old coon, way up in the tree!  We were all so proud of him, but later Dad told Mom that the hunters had all been drunk, and they couldn’t shoot straight if it killed them.