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Humor and woodsy wisdom by Laura Lollar

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What Went Thump in the Night at Camp

September 15, 2021 by Cabin Mama

One of the best parts of going to Camp was sleeping in the big bunkbeds Grandpa built into the walls of the cabin. But one night we had more excitement than we bargained for!

There were two big beds downstairs and two upstairs, along with a couple of twin sized. Those beds were so big you could have one heckuva slumber party in them. They also made great trampolines!

One night we girls decided to sleep in the upstairs bunkbed. As the sun started to set, we climbed the stairs into the dusky room lined with knotty pine paneling. The bed was built into the corner of the room and took up two walls. We clambered on in but rather than sleep, we launched into telling our scariest ghost stories. 

Mom, Dad and the boys were trying to sleep downstairs. We must have been making a lot of noise, because Mom yelled up to us. “You girls stop talking or I’m going to have to send your Father up there!”

So we quieted down, laying still and silent for a while, listening to each other breathe. 

Then we heard the noise!

Scratching and thumping, it would go on for a few seconds, then it would stop. Did it come from the closet or inside the walls?

“Did you hear that?”

“Uh yeah. Did you do it?”

“Um, no!”

We weren’t sure WHERE it was coming from, but we didn’t like it one bit!

We started yelling, “Daddy, there’s something up here!” Dad came bounding up the stairs. He shined a flashlight all around the room trying to see where the sound was coming from. 

By then we were screaming, “The picture! The picture! It’s over there!”

We pointed towards the picture on the far wall. It was jumping around. It lifted and fell like it had a life of its own. And it DID! 

By now the boys had run up the stairs to see what was going on. Still more screaming from us girls but the boys were louder. “Get it Dad! Get it!” 

Dad grabbed a broom and lifted a corner of the picture frame up and away from the wall. Down crashed the picture…

…and out flew a bat!

It fluttered back and forth around the room, darting here and there, ducking and out-maneuvering Dad’s broom. Now ALL of us were screaming, jumping up and down and flailing our arms to fight off the softball-sized creature. Dad tried to hit it, but he kept missing. That bat was quick!

Finally Dad opened the door which led to the roof, hoping the bat would find its way out. After a few more laps around the room and a few more swats with the broom, the bat flew out into the night.

“We’re so glad you got rid of that thing!” said a sister.

“We should have kept it, Dad!” said a brother.

Once the glass from the broken picture was swept up, back to bed we went. It took us a long time to settle down after that. We were scared at first, but now we were giggling.

Mom didn’t think it was so funny. “Settle down girls,” she yelled up at us. Then Dad added one of his famous phrases, “You kids go to sleep now. Tomorrow’s another day!”

The Bigger the Fur Balls the Better

September 1, 2021 by Cabin Mama

Animals are funny. Never thought I’d say this, but they seem like they’re almost human.

We are step-parents to my daughter’s dog, Penny, a lovely chocolate lab. She’s won our hearts, but that doesn’t mean she’s got us wrapped around her finger (or paw).

Take feeding time for example. We have a routine where we let her out for her morning relief before filling her food dish. She’s barely finished her business outside when she makes a mad dash up onto the deck, through the door and over to her food bowl. You’ve never seen such unbridled enthusiasm! She’s panting hard, rearing up on her hind legs and bouncing around the kitchen like a baby goat. Then she gobbles down her food, navigating her way around the plastic maze in her bowl designed to slow down the gulping action.

She knows a few words quite well: treat, food, dinner, time to eat, and outside are the primary ones. She also knows “rope” which refers to the knotted rag rope she chews on, wrestles with, and drags all over the house. To her credit, she also knows the words sit, wait, stay, and lay down.

Oh, and it’s a big deal when someone pulls in the driveway or she hears the doorbell. What a ruckus! This summer I was on an HGTV kick. There was a commercial every ten minutes that featured a doorbell. I would grab the remote and mute the volume to keep her from launching into another dramatic home protection response. It’s great to have a dog around for protective purposes, but I wanted to spare her (and me) the drama of false alarms. 

It amazes me how much Penny understands and displays human-like behaviors. She’s a consummate beggar and is picky about the person on whom she showers her attention. That would be my husband, Doug. But food trumps all. When he finishes his meal and there’s no more to be had, if I’m still eating she moves right over to me. She sits there, focused like a laser beam on each bite I take. Her head tilts and her eyebrows twist. If I look over at her, she wags her tail. The tail wagging speed is commensurate with the likelihood of accessing food. If I move to get up from the table, she goes into hyperdrive and follows the plate (not me) over to the counter.

When she does something worthy of a T.R.E.A.T., I put it down on the floor and she knows enough to wait. She sits there staring at the morsels, then ever so slowly tilts her head and looks up at me with those big brown eyes under bushy eyebrows with a pleading expression. You can almost hear her thinking, “Please ma’am, can I have some more?”

I swear she has an alarm clock in her belly. She knows she gets fed in the morning after her trip outside, so I can understand that. But her evening feeding instincts are mind boggling. She’ll come trotting over to me and when I try to pet her, she’ll veer away in the direction of her food dish. This gets repeated a few times, just to make sure her purpose is clear. This act can start about 3 pm. When I get her drift, I look down at her and say, “No, it’s not time yet.” Then she snorts, sneezes, circles around a few times and plops herself down at my feet to wait.

Her feeding time is anytime from 4pm on. At 4pm on the button, she signals it’s that special time (in case I had forgotten). As I move toward the food bowl and say, “Alright, alright!” the bouncing and panting begins. (I wish my kids had been that enthusiastic when they came to the dinner table!) 

Her food bowl is designed like a plastic maze with corridors where the food accumulates as I pour it in. This “slow feeder bowl” is supposed to slow down the eating process and minimize gulping. I’d hate to think how fast she’d eat if the maze wasn’t there. It’s all gone in a matter of minutes. My daughter put a sign on the dog food container that says, “Penny has been fed. Don’t let her fool you!” It’s designed to prevent others in the household from taking pity on her and thinking she’d not yet been fed. The sign also says “morning” on one side and “night” on the other, so we can avoid falling prey to her oh-so-persuasive doggie charms. We flip the sign over to signify what time of the day she’s already been fed.

I’ve always been a cat person so being adoptive parents to my daughter’s dog was a new adventure. She is a sweetheart who follows me from room to room and settles down at my feet to nap. She’s easily pleased. Food and love are all she craves. We can do no wrong in her eyes. Now I understand the adage about trying to be the person your dog thinks you are.

Then there’s our cat, Snickers. She rarely interacts with Penny because she’s better, ya know. She’s really in charge and just puts up with the interloper. Occasionally, Penny will get a little too close, causing a quick response from Snickers, the princess. There’s hissing, batting of paws and (if looks could kill) an expression of pure contempt. I call it the Garfield look.

Snickers makes it clear when she’s hungry too. We’ve indulged her and it shows. Her pudgy tummy and apron swings back and forth as she trots down the hallway to her napping spot. At the end of the day, she hops up on our bed, makes a few quick loops around the perimeter and settles in next to my husband. During the night though, I feel a hot, furry body snuggled up next to me, which is nearly impossible to nudge out of the way. (It’s not my husband, silly.) She sleeps close most of the night unless she jumps to the floor and makes that awful hacking sound of an emerging fur ball. Do I get up in the middle of the night to clean up the mess? Nope. But we tread carefully in the morning.

Speaking of fur, we get a “two-fer” between cat and dog hair. Of course, I could clean more often. But why do that when cat hair gets deposited in little wet fur balls on the carpet and dog hair rolls down the hallway like tumbling tumbleweeds? It’s so much easier to just pick them up and put them in the trash. Why do all that vacuuming?

I’m afraid we’re hooked on having a dog and a cat, but my husband talks of us getting a horse or two. I say, the bigger the fur balls, the better!

Colorado Dinosaur Bones

August 31, 2021 by Cabin Mama

We got the heck outta town a few weeks ago and drove up to see the Dinosaur National Monument. We spent a few hours (and $25.00 entrance fee) cozying up to a collection of dinosaur bones embedded in the side of a rock face. The National Monument and the Dinosaur Quarry is located near Vernal, Utah at the border of Colorado and Utah.

Both me and my Mom have always been fascinated by geology and what can be found within the rocks that cover our earth. Mom jokes that she’s almost as old as the dinosaur bones. But far from it. She’s such a kidder!

It’s fascinating that creatures that large roamed the earth, but when you get close to the bones, you get a sense as to the size. It’s also very interesting to read the story of the paleontologist, Earl Douglas, who stumbled over bones projecting out of the rocks, which led him to start digging in 1909. President Woodrow Wilson made the area an official national monument in 1915. Read more about the Dinosaur Monument history.

The interesting thing is, all these bones were found piled up on top of one another and embedded in the rock. It makes you wonder how that happened. Well, they believe the dinosaurs died in a flooded riverbed which washed the bodies and bones to an area where their bodies stacked up in one spot. That’s why this was such a great discovery!

And they’re still finding more bones! In the summer of 2019, paleontologists found a Stegosaurus femur, three intact teeth and countless other fossils. Read all about these latest discoveries.

We were glad to find the Quarry Museum air-conditioned, but they do require you to be masked in order to enter. It can get pretty toasty in the summer, so bring a hat and water if you decide to hike the trails at the Monument.

It does leave you with a sense of awe that creatures like this lived in our neck of the woods, so to speak. And if you’re hankering to see more fossils and dinosaur bones, you can also visit Garden Park Fossil Area near Canyon City, Colorado.

Lollypop Farm

November 13, 2020 by Cabin Mama

In Rochester NY where I grew up, the local branch of the Humane Society was affectionately known as Lollypop Farm. We kids loved to visit there because it had a barnyard with goats and sheep we could feed and pet. It was where you went to adopt an animal. It was also where you took the pets you could not keep. We always wondered about Lollypop Farm. Did all the pets there get adopted? Mom and Dad said they did.

There were six of us kids. At one point, Mom and Dad had five under five. We didn’t have a lot of pets ‘cause my folks had their hands full as it was. But with enough pleading, a few critters found their way into our home. I never got the pony I wanted, but we scored with a few smaller animals.

Mugsy was my brother Eric’s apricot poodle. He was cute, cuddly and very portable. We took Mugsy with us on our trip to Cape Cod in a big Winnebago motor home. He liked to lay on the long, wide dashboard and survey the countryside. When my Dad made a turn, Mugsy slid smoothly across the vinyl dash to the driver’s side. 

But Mugsy didn’t like to be left behind. Mom would come home from grocery shopping and find that sweet little dog on their bed getting far too frisky with her decorative pillows. The last straw was when he wet all over Mom’s brand new living room drapes.

Mugsy went to Lollypop Farm.

Trixie was the cat from hell. She was super hyper from the moment we brought her home. She’d run loops around the tops of our living room furniture. She had wild eyes and would show her sharp teeth when she panted.  We were all afraid of her. My youngest brother still sports a scar down his face from that demon cat. 

Trixie went to Lollypop Farm.

I had a big, beautiful white male rabbit. We kept him in a fenced spot in the backyard in the summer. In the winter he stayed in the garage in a cage. He would get so excited to see us! If we walked close to his cage, he’d run around in circles and display his manliness. That didn’t bode well for the bottom of my Dad’s dress pants. 

It wasn’t long before the rabbit went to Lollypop Farm too.

My brother Paul’s long haired guinea pig was so funny! We called him Jerry and he looked like a little mop on batteries. He was black with streaks of caramel colored hair that reached to the ground. We’d put him on the floor in the middle of the kitchen just to watch him scurry to the corner and hide under the cabinets. He made us laugh!

Jerry’s cage was in a basement room where Mom worked on her crafts. After church one day we all came home to find him stretched out in his cage. My brother said, “Mom, something is wrong with Jerry. He doesn’t look too good. And he’s not moving.” We soon held a burial ceremony for Jerry and laid him to rest somewhere in the back yard. 

Months later, Mom was in her craft room spray painting one of her creations and she noticed a warning on the side of the can. “May harm small animals.” She felt terrible. Poor Jerry never made it to Lollipop Farm.

My parents are very compassionate people. Truly. They love animals. My Mom keeps the birds fat and happy. She stuffs peanut butter into the holes Dad drilled into a birch log and she hangs it under the front porch. But Mom and Dad both battle with the squirrels. They’ve tried every which way to keep them out of the bird feeders and the flower pots. Dad finally took drastic measures and bought a cage. Once it caught a mad-as-a-wet-hen victim, he’d relocate it to the park at the end of their street. For every squirrel he moved to the park, four or five new ones appeared back up at the house. One squirrel nested in a spruce outside their back patio door, so now they have a whole “fam damily” of squirrels.

Next stop – Lollypop Farm!

Horse Crazy Girl Finally Gets a Pony

October 13, 2020 by Cabin Mama

How many of us will admit to being a little horse crazy as a kid? When I was a young ‘un, I lined the shelves in my bedroom with lots of little plastic horse statues, hoping one day I’d get to own a real one.

When my parents took us six kids to a winter festival, we sat on a sled with hay bales pulled by a team of huge draft horses. I remember telling my mom, “I love the smell of horses!”

My sisters and I would pretend to be Palominos, Appaloosas, Arabians and Mustangs. We’d run through the woods, whinnying and pawing the air with our “hooves” to prove just how wild and untamed we really were.

I dreamed of having an office one day like Wilbur on TV. His horse, Mr. Ed, would hang his head over the stall door that separated the barn from the architect’s place of business. Ah, the best of both worlds!

Then I grew up. I rode whenever a chance occurred, took a few riding lessons and vowed one day I’d have my own horse. But the time never came. I got married and the kids came along, which took most of our resources to keep up with. And later on when I bought the cabin, there wasn’t enough room to board a horse on that little spot in the woods.

But Doug had owned a horse. And he had built himself a small barn to keep “Sunny” in.

So early on in our dating adventures, he invited me over for dinner and gave me a tour of the place. He had a saddle in the basement, horse blankets on a stand and ropes on the wall, just like a real cowboy!

He even called me “Darlin’” with that country kind of drawl. (Every time he calls me “Darlin” it gives me goosebumps!)

But there was more! “C’mon out to the barn,” he said. “I’ve got something to show you.” 

He slid open the door and sunshine streamed across the dirt floor to the hay bales stacked against the rough wooden panels.

“I know you’ve been hankerin’ for a horse, so I got you one.”

And there it was, with sunlight bathing its long brown mane and a white blaze across its forehead. It stood there placid, silent and serene and stared deep into my eyes.

My very own stick pony!

He urged me to take it for a ride, but I knew I was too much of a novice to do it justice. So I just took it home and it shares my office. Just like Wilbur and Mr. Ed!

Cats Gone Crazy

June 22, 2020 by Cabin Mama

There I was, wrapping gifts on my bed with plastic bags, wrapping paper, boxes and ribbons laying around. Both cats were in the room and they were having a heyday playing with the paper clippings and plastic wrappers.

It was a beautiful summer day and I had both the big windows open looking out over the distant hills and the street below. The breeze fluttered through and made for a very calm and peaceful afternoon.

But then it happened. Missy got herself tangled up in a plastic bag and it freaked her out! She tore around on the bed trying to get the bag off, then leapt to the floor and did laps around the bedroom. The bag sailed behind her like a piece of unfurled boat canvas. I tried to no avail to catch her. She was too fast for me and as much as I tried, she eluded my grasp, darting around the bed, under the dresser and over the headboard.

That wasn’t all! Our other cat, Fuzzy, saw Missy’s turmoil and tore off after her. I don’t know why she freaked out too, but emotions must be just as catchy in animals as they are with humans.

So now I had TWO cats streaking around the bedroom in circles! They were becoming more frantic by the minute and it seemed like this went on for ages! I ran to the bedroom door and slammed it shut to keep them from getting out, which seemed to make them even more panicky. Before I could catch either one of them, Missy leapt towards the window. She flew straight through the screen and sailed out into the open air. Two. Stories. Up! Then, Fuzzy jumped right out after her!

Two cats sailed out into the wild blue yonder with nothing below to catch them but grass. I ran to the window to see if they were okay and when I looked down, the cats were nowhere to be seen.

However, below stood a stunned couple standing stock still, looking up at me as I looked down at them. Their mouths were wide open, then they burst into laughter. Doubled over and barely able to breathe, the woman said, “That’s the funniest thing we’ve ever seen! Cats flying out of a window — it isn’t something you see everyday!”

It was pretty funny when I think back on it. Fortunately the cats were okay and I was able to corral them back into the house. They were shaken, panting hard and scared as the dickens! It’ll teach me to leave plastic bags lying around where they can get into them. I should resort to something less tempting — either that or shut my windows!

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