Spring is my favourite time of year. The brown of late winter has turned an invigorating green. Each morning the robins' song wakens us and each night the peepers put us to sleep. The trees are fat with the expectancy of new leaves. The forsythia that have sparkled with vibrancy for several weeks have lost only a little of their intensity. The lilacs are already teasing us with the first hints of the flowers and rich aroma to come. Some daffodils have already faded but others are still in full bloom and the tulips are just beginning to show hints of their many rich colours. Blue birds have nested in one of our houses and swallows in others.
What I enjoy about our garden in particular is that it is made up of mostly perennials. However, I spent much of yesterday digging in the earth and planting some annuals - a variety of sunflowers that will hopefully stand from 3 to 14 feet tall this summer if the seeds do not become a feast for the birds.

All this talk of capturing critters reminds me of another incident. But, I am not the only one who is a disposer of unwanted and damaging wildlife. Now don't get me wrong, wildlife in the right places is fine with me - indeed I love nothing better than watching an abundance of nature's activity in the fields and bush around the house and outbuildings.

Buster the Beast - What is one to do when, lying on a Friday rainy evening by the fire, one hears a bang and then a crashhhh coming from some undisclosed location in the silent house? It sounds like a picture falling off the wall or perhaps the wind knocking the swing against the front porch wall. Then another bang more resonant than the first!... Perhaps the ironing board falling from it's reluctant perch on the basement stair wall.
Rising from my reclining position I make a hasty tour of the house, room by room, floor by floor and not a thing seems amiss. Then back to the couch - had I dropped off, was I dreaming.... Craaaashhhhhhhh! The Garden Cottage!
What burglar had entered while I dozed? Why are the cat and dog so somnolent? I enter the adjacent wing timidly. Sooty footprints are everywhere as are little black droppings of apparent excrement. The clock has been knocked off the desk and is lying in the middle of the floor. A crystal is lying next to the lamp from which it once hung .... the dried hydrangea has crumbled... a sterling inlaid glass dish is lying in a thousand pieces like tiny diamonds next to the fire place. The fireplace door is ajar.
Suddenly, taking me aback with a silently uttered scream, a small, black, furry creature flies around the corner and tears by a cowering me into the bedroom where it tries to climb the newly painted wall and pass through the closed window. Slam! I close it in the bedroom, fearing that it might jump up into the loft to escape further detection.
"Buster!", I call.
"Where are you when I need you? And Charlie, where is your feline hunter instinct? Are you too well fed? Buster, come here, Buster, come..."
I hear the click, click of his long nails against the wooden floor in the room next door... Once in the bedroom, Buster's hair bristles. No more the domestic, sleepy dog. No more sloppy, playful pup. Frozen, he stands - Majestic! The Beast emerges! I quickly close the bedroom door again. I leave the two black creatures to face each other as if the room were a primaeval forest. I go in search of a broom. Yes, a broom!
Returning not more than a minute later, I hear.... nothing... -- no thing.... -- nought! I slowly open the barrier between cottage and woods, and there stands the black brute, squirrel clutched in his mighty jaws, hair bristling on his noble back, shaking it viciously from side to side to side. He bounds past me, lest I scold him or worse - take his toy, out of the bedroom he races with his catch. He bounds further, out of the Garden Cottage and into the main house. I bound after him , much less gracefully, and head directly to the back porch door. I open it quickly and he runs out before I can catch my breathe - black with black disappearing in the black rainy night...
Time passes. I hear the rain on the roof. Later, I wonder where is my dog? I peer out through the rain drenched window across the drive to the distant lawn... There lies the shadow of a dog, who does not like the rain, just a dark shape in the dreary night, soaked, proud, stretched full out, playing gently with his prize, now presumed long dead.
Still later, I go out to see if I can coax him inside so that I can go to bed... He stands. He nuzzles the ground. He holds his head high. I hear the crunching of tiny bones... crunch, crunch, crunch. He stops. I hear the smack of contently licked lips. He looks at me not knowing if he has been bad or good. Buster wags his tale and gives a frisky wiggle of his whole body and comes obediently into the house. A very exhausted hunter is soon snoring.
Next morning I returned to the scene and found only a very wet and motley tail.

Well, life in the country continues to be wonderful. Last Sunday we burned a very large pile of lumber debris from the construction work that is going on here right now. Our lower field is where we usually do this sort of burning and it is usually brush from our property. I like to do it in February when there is snow on the ground. However, we had had plenty of rain and the hay field was not yet too long. It was a perfect day - cool and sunny. And while we were at our task, a group of horsemen in full English Hunt regalia and a pack of well behaved hounds rounded the corner and trooped by. This is not an everyday event but it does happen from time to time. In its way, it was as wonderful as seeing the deer in the fields, or a majestic loan wolf bound along the fence line or even the flock of very large wild turkeys strut on the far hill.

Happy 80th Birthday to a great lady! Great hat too!

Masked Marauders: The recent skunk story reminds me of another story that took place here shortly after we had moved from the City. At that time our outbuildings were in much need of tender loving care. The former horse barn, which is now our office, had recently become the cat house for our two kittens, acquired to keep the rodent population at bay. Soon however, we noticed that the young cats would look in terror at the building and would not go near. We discovered an infestation of racoons that had become aggressive squatters. It was then that we acquired the live trap. And the more we set it, the more we caught – nine in all!
Racoons are not like skunks and could be easily transported in the back of our then still urban cars to distant and isolated locations and this is what we did… However, one occasion caused my heart to race. Now these live traps are rectangular in shape , just over 2 feet long and just short of a foot high and wide. They are made of a strong wire mesh and have a wire door at one end and a small door at the other end on top for dropping feed onto a tray beneath. This door is about 3 inches square and is locked with a small wire hook.
At the time I had an old manual transmission Hyundai Pony, a hatchback missing the cover between the trunk and the cabin. It was my trusty tractor and my pickup truck. I had caught what turned out to be the last of the nine marauders and set the trap in the hatch and drove down our lane to the pothole ridden concession road below. Shortly after heading onto the road I heard banging coming from the rear of the vehicle. I glanced over my shoulder, smugly knowing the banging was in vain. The banging persisted and there was a definite sense of heaving. I slowed down and looked in the rearview mirror… to my surprise a furry arm was sticking up through the small opening. I smiled, convinced that there was nothing to worry about. But, a doubting Thomas, I glanced back again. An arm and a nose. The car proceeded at a slow speed … an arm, a nose a head … I geared down further… The cage wiggled and the racoon wriggled. Two arms, a nose, a head, and a substantial portion of the body … I was sweating. Then terror! – The racoon was climbing over the back seat… By then the car was in first gear, the driver's door open and I stood dusty on the gravel road watching the car chug forward driverless and hiccupping to a desperate stop. The racoon paused, looked out the window, climbed onto the driver's seat and then out the door and scuttled past me contemptuously up the road back to our lane, up the lane and back to the horse barn. Fortunately no one was about to see my bewilderment and frustration.

Rural Life: I am suffering from a lingering cold. It is the fault of at least one skunk. But it turns out there were at least two of them. And together they made an amorous smell under the Garden Cottage sunroom. Many attempts to scared them out with loud rock music, or blocking holes failed. If you have ever lived with a skunk you will know why they are not a good thing to have around – especially if you have an inquisitive and stubborn dog. An attempt at live trapping the beast(s) made for well-fed beasts but empty traps. Therefore we called in the pest control – not a very well organized one. But they did have the magic trick – marshmallows! Yes skunks love marshmallows. They caught the critter, but were not wise enough to think to cover the trap. Skunks are docile in traps unless they can see you. So the pest control officer got sprayed and so did the wall of the house. But they took away the cute little thing and that cost us $160. The next day they returned to secure the premises with buried chicken wire… To our surprise, that cost us another $160! I think we were taken to the cleaners, only it did not get rid of the skink smell. The next day I discovered there was another hole. I covered it. It was uncovered and the hole got bigger. Not to be short another $320, I bought marshmallows myself and got out our own trap. One needs such a trap when living in the country. Being wise I set the trap away from the house and planted a trail of marshmallows right into the cage. The skunk loved the marshmallows but did not set off the trap, I presume because it merely reached through the wire for its after dinner treat. So I moved the trap back close to the house and too close to a stone wall for it to reach in from the sides. I then covered the trap with a blanket and re-planted the bait… Alas, the next early dawn, I snuck around and found the door closed. The captive was docile and heavy. I carried the covered cage carefully away from the house and out into the paddock. I had lain awake much of the night plotting my course of action… I would affixiate it! I moved the car into the paddock and found a very long eaves down spout that I attached to the tail pipe. I then placed the open end of the pipe into the cage under the cover and went somewhat guiltily in for breakfast. An hour latter I returned to find bemused contractors (who were working on barn renovations) scratching their heads and wondering what I was up to. I knocked the cage. Not a whimper. They were truly impressed. I then started to remove the sheet and what was presumed dead arose again! A truly Easter event. The sheet was hastily returned to its former place. There was but one thing to do. Letting it go within miles of the place was not an option. Skunks have incredible homing instincts. Living in the country with an old well, we have an abundance of rain barrels. I half emptied one and put it on a dolly and moved it to the paddock. The cage would fit in but the water was not deep enough. I repeated the action with a second barrel and had one of the contractors assist me with emptying its contents into the first barrel. A quick heave of the cage into the icy water did the trick almost instantaneously. The poor creature is buried on the fence line not too far from the rhubarb patch. In the process I got rather wet but amazingly, through all of this there was no further spraying. The contractors have proclaimed me the "Dunk the Skunk" king. The smell permeating the Garden Cottage is slowly dissipating. I am suffering with a cough and cold and a somewhat guilty conscience.

2006 is our 20th season at Woodhead Cottage, a rustic cabin (no hydro, no plumbing) on a pristine point of land on a small lake in the Parry Sound region of Ontario. It is a wonderful retreat from the encroachment of constant communication, although over the years we have developed quite an enjoyable social life there.

Our decision to leave Toronto in 1994 and move to the country was the best decision we could possibly have made. The Croft on Wind's-E'e is an 1860 Ontario farm house situated on a hill with endless views of mixed forest and farmland in all directions.