Tread Lightly

In our house, impaling your foot on a Hot Wheels car ranks pretty high on the pain scale, but it's a rare occurrence. Around here you're far more likely to step on a sharp, bristley, saliva-soaked burr.

No child or adult is immune in this house. It's only a matter of time before you puncture your foot on one of these critters.

The burr announces its presence by jabbing its teeth into the bottom of your foot and, thanks to the cotton fibers of your sock, it hooks on for dear life. Or at least until you've stepped on it several times or hopped around and peeled the prickly mass free -- usually sticking your fingers in the process.

There's no escaping these things because the burrs do a fabulous job of camouflaging themselves in the rug. You might spot one in the daytime but at night, they're land mines poised to strike.

Where do these burrs come from, you ask? Well, they're born from the stemmy, weedy growth that hovers along the corn fields and their journey begins when a flash of black and white fur -- pink tongue wagging -- comes roaring past at 24 miles per hour. In an instant, these toothy seeds are swept up in the tail of the beast and they happily hunker down in the mass of fur.

The beast is moving too fast to notice that she's picked up the freeloaders. But that evening when she's curled up on the couch, shedding bits of grit and dirt from the day's adventure, she feels their prick. While the human dwellers are asleep or mesmerized by tv, she tugs at the burrs with her teeth and tongue. Finally she frees herself from the prickly growths and spits them out -- quite far, I'll tell you -- whereupon each saliva soaked burr, well concealed within a few tufts of fur, blends into the swirls of the rug.

And there they happily wait for their next victim.

Get in the spirit

Ah, Halloween. The holiday that requires virtually no preparation. No trips to the mall, no holiday cards. You just stuff the kids in their costumes, nudge them toward the door and you're done. And the great thing about little kids: they're too young to inventory their loot at the end of the night. Toss 'em a jolly rancher and they're thrilled.

Man, I could go for a snickers and a milky way right now....

A wail in the night

I first heard the screaming around 10 one evening. I was out retrieving my cell phone from the car when a piercing wail cracked the quiet. Someone was out there, in the fields beyond our farm, shrieking in pain. It wasn't a call for help, it was just this terrifying wail that froze me in my tracks and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. When it stopped all that was left was thunderous silence. But when she, or it, started up again, I bolted for the house.

It turns out that no one was hacked to pieces in our darkened field. And as human as those screams sounded, they were just the calls of a raptor so small it could sit inside a coffee mug.

That haunting whinny came from a "screech owl" -- an itty bitty bird with some impressive vocal chords. It's shrill call is sometimes described as "the sound of a female in pain or fear."

Apparently, the Eastern screech owl is a small nocturnal bird that dwells in woodlands bordered by open spaces. These birds like to make short forays into fields, swooping down on mice and moles, bats and small birds. Males have a low-pitched voice -- a mellow, muted trill, but they also have a "B-song" and that's likely the shrill scream that scared the pants off of me.

It nice to know that the wail comes from a harmless bird and not the victim of an ax murder. Still, when I hear that screech I head for the house.

When manure beckons

With kids and horses and sheep and a dog, we are acutely aware of poop. There's no avoiding it, no way to shield yourself from the dirty fact that every day brings various forms of waste removal.

And you might think that the biggest beasts are the worst offenders. But mucking horse stalls isn't as bad as you'd think. In fact I've grown to enjoy it.

Armed with a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow, scooping poop is a satisfying task. It's that mindless, methodical progression from stall to stall to restore order. Improvement is instantly evident.

Plus mucking guarantees 20 minutes of peace and solitude. No one wants to be around when you're flinging great mounds of manure and urine-soaked bedding through the air. Scooping poop is an escape from toddler demands, vibrating cell phones and blaring tv commercials. A temporary reprieve from the food-encrusted dishes teetering in the sink and the funky-smelling laundry forgotten in the washing machine. There's dinner that no one's planned -- much less cooked -- a kitchen trash can that screams to be emptied, and a patchwork of muddy paw prints on the floor.

I survey this scene, shake my leg free of the kid who needs a snack now! and make my pitch to Martin: "Why don't you stay here and chill out with the kids. Just get things started and I'll go muck stalls." As if I'm making a big sacrifice. Like I'm doing him a favor. Woe is me, I'm venturing out to sling manure.

But in the barn there's no talking or crying or TV din. It's just me and the rhythmic chirp of the crickets. The occasional snort as a grazing horse clears his nose. A passing train's hollow racket against the tracks. The scamper of claws on concrete as the cats leap at the moths drawn to the barn. And the muted "whump" of manure as it lands in the wheelbarrow.

Lost in thought the stalls are cleaned fast -- too fast. So I dump the wheelbarrow, scrub and refill the water buckets, place a flake of hay in each stall, sweep the aisle and set out the morning feed.

It's when the cat food rattles in the bowls and I extract my legs from the purring fur that it hits me:

The barn is done. It's time to go back inside. And face the insanity.

Natural Borne Killers

"Hey, do you guys want to watch some TV? How about some cartoons before dinner?"

The kids are poised to spill out of the car and I offer up cookies, cartoons -- whatever it takes to lure them from their usual path across the lawn.

Because that path will take them past Mel, our sweet, laid-back tabby, who at that moment is torturing a bird.

He's in no rush. He's enjoying himself, stretched out on the grass and batting the prey back and forth between his paws. The bird is still alive, it's feathery sides heaving. But it's beyond saving and you can tell: even the bird's given up hope.

The Boy knows that the cats are serial killers and he's seen his share of rodent and reptile death, but I want to shield him from this: one animal sucking the life from another.

on the lookout

The cats are completely heartless. At times I've walked from car to house and followed a breadcrumb trail of body parts. Limbs and organs from frogs and salamanders, mangled birds and moles, half eaten mice and corn snakes.

If they're especially proud, the cats leave a trophy by our shoes in the mudroom. A bloody mouse head or a nondescript organ. I crouch down and peer at it. Is that a liver? Maybe it's the stomach...

In recent years Frog -- that's Frog the Cat, -- has been the Queen of Carnage. But Spook is no slouch. This summer the cats went on a bat binge leaving lifeless winged creatures scattered about the barn. One afternoon we stumbled on a wounded victim and while Martin and I discussed how to put the bat out of it's misery, Spook quietly sauntered over and bit it's head off.

It's amazing that horror movies have featured people terrorized by sharks, birds, mammoth worms, even mutant jackrabbits. But never cats. And that's funny because they'd be the ones who would pin us to the ground and tear us apart limb by limb.

And they'd enjoy it.

Traffic Log

My commute to work:
Stuck behind oversized combine pulling load of corn, moving 10 mph....
Then, smooth sailing until cookie-cutter subdivision sprawl infests roadway; 10 minute backup to pivotal intersection....
Final 2 miles, road crew shaves a lane with cones...crew stands around observing gridlock handiwork.

Total travel time: 50 minutes

Martin's commute:
Stop to glance at wolf spider hanging from screen door....
Step over cat sprawled in grass.

Total travel time: 30 seconds.

Boxcars and whistles

There's something quaint and timeless about living near a well-traveled train line.

We're not near enough to see the train from the house, but we hear it as it traces the ridge along the river and curls toward town*, rolling over the stone bridge above the road.

(*definition of town: convenience store/gas pump)

We spy the train trundling over the bridge, as our car ducks beneath it and emerges on the other side, leaving just a box car or two flashing in the rearview mirror.

Sometimes it's a short passenger train racing toward the city but most of the time it's a lumbering freight train, tugging vats of coal or multi-colored boxcars marred by graffiti and smudged with grime.

Of course the Boy and the Barbarian are giddy when they see it -- enraptured as all kids must be. And if they're with me when the train clatters past, I'll pull into the local train station -- a little clapboard outpost that looks like a prop in a Rockwell painting, or a piece on a monopoly board.

At the station we watch the boxcars roll by, grumbling against the tracks. There's something mesmerizing about the scene -- the kids quiet down and study the procession of freight as it rolls by. Every so often the train slows and the sound of steel on steel blasts us with a screech. Finally a boxcar rolls past with no mate and Hadley bursts into tears. The show's over.

When I ride my horse out in the mornings, I gauge my timeliness by the train's approach. Pass the train down by the river and it's 7:09; I'm right on time. If there' s no train, I'm late.

From the farm the train sounds louder -- and seems closer -- at night when the house is at rest. Amplified against the hills, the train rocks back and forth against the tracks and the whistle pipes up, clear and sharp.

It's that sound -- the whistle sounding from the darkness -- that I like so much. It's lonely and comforting all at once.