City girl moves to the woods…and learns to laugh

Okay, so three months ago, I had no idea I would be living way back in the woods of a nearby rural county. But, guess what? I am. God’s funny that way.

My husband Bill and I use to go camping back in the day and that was about as rustic as I would get. Keep in mind, though, he kept his woman happy by erecting a screen tent with painter’s plastic flooring, ran electrical cord to an electric outlet somewhere within whatever park or mountain we were camping so I could have real lights, my microwave, a fan and so forth. He also made a tarp covering between the screen tent and the actual tent, again with the flooring, so I could stay barefoot and clean and never wet. In our tent, he blew up a mattress with a hand pump so I didn’t have to sleep on the hard ground in a sleeping bag. Heck, I even had my favorite sheets and comforter with us on these trips.

Bill was a hardcore hunter and outdoorsman and he did his things his way, but by golly, he made sure his small town/city girl could have an outdoor Holiday Inn! LOL!

So, here’s the funny part. I’ve been praying for some time for God to let some things fall into place so I could have my own place once again. Times have been rough financially for years since Bill became terminally ill with Lou Gherig’s and I honestly had no idea if I’d ever have more than a rental. But, some really cool things began to fall into place in November and people, who had no idea that God was working through them, had a huge part in me having my own home again.

When I am inside, I have no idea that I live in a manufactured home, and honestly, unless there are storms, I don’t care.

God put me in this really great place that I love and it is a mile into the woods out in a rural county. All those people made this happen. God’s hand is all over it.

But, and this is a big but, God also has a sense of humor. A big one!

I love animals, love to rescue animals and have 10 of my own, including three bunnies. I love wildlife, with the exception of the reptilian type and I am not fond of mice and rats, but they are okay if they are not, repeat not, in my house.

This last week, I have had five mice in my house. Mice, rats, all the same to me.

The first one I found in the middle of my bed when I got home from work one evening. Eek! I knew that either the cat or one of the dogs had kindly placed it there as a gift of love, but no, just no. I really didn’t appreciate the gift, though I was glad it was dead. I took it by the tail and slung it into the dense woods around my home.

Well, since that time, I have had a mouse jump off my water heater and run over my arm. A cat caught that one and went outside with it. That night, I awaken to feel something warm on my leg that was not a dog or cat. I had been gifted once again with a fresh kill. You better believe I jumped out of that bed so quick, slung another dead, but still warm rat, out my back door, stripped my bed and did a load of laundry before I went back to bed.

I wish I could say that was the end of my mouse adventures. It was not.

Sunday afternoon, one of the dogs, Russia, got up from a dead sleep in the living room and dashed to the cubby in the hallway where the cat litter box is. She was digging and slinging litter all over like a fountain—thankfully I had cleaned the litter box out earlier—then she stopped digging and before I could even react, she trotted to the living room with a live mouse in her mouth and promptly dropped it on my bare feet.

How fast do you think a 54-year-old woman can get up out of a glider rocker? Fast, I tell you. Lightning fast.

I picked that varmint up by the tail and flung open my front door and slung that sucker as far and as hard as I could toward the woods…just as a large, and I mean a large, multi-point whitetail buck ran across the drive, behind my car and into the woods.

Y’all, I nearly took down a trophy buck with a dead mouse! LOL!

Only in my life. Only in my life.

One last thing before bed happened. I went to wash my supper dishes and a dang mouse jumped out of my dishwater. I was done then, just done. Couldn’t take another incident. Cinderella (me) needed to retreat to her room, break out the acrylics and brushes and do some painting…after I stuffed blankets under my door so no more mice could get in my room. The animals except the blind cat and the blind dachshund were made to stay in the kitchen and living room to catch anything else that might reveal itself.

City girl is now a country girl and I can handle it, I think.

Jan Murray is a staff writer for The Southeast Sun and Daleville Sun-Courier. The opinions of this writer are her own and not the opinion of the paper. She can be reached at (334) 393-2969 or by email at [email protected].