Greetings, and welcome back! When we last left off, the Herzl-Betz Expeditionary Force was going to sleep. Unfortunately, during the night a rather large porcupine decided to resume its assault on our house. Now, assault may seem to be a strange word to use when referring to a woodland animal's actions against a house, but I use it here in its fullest sense. The picture to the right is an example of what the porcupines have done on their latest round of attacks. Apparently they somehow figured out that the door contained wood on the inside, so they chewed through the aluminum frame to get to the wood. Determined little suckers, eh? At least they are not chewing on the foundations of the house anymore- apparently they don't like cedar shingles.
As we prepared to head out my mom checked to see if her new key worked in the door, and at least to her cursory examination it seemed to work fine, so we headed out. Our first stop was at another piece of land of ours in nearby Jefferson, N.H. We met up with our forester, Dana Blaise, who walked us around the property and told us how he was going to conduct the tree harvest. Apparently our land has an unusually large population of oak for the northeast and Dana wants to try to increase that population even more to help sustain the local wildlife.
After that we headed into town to get keys made and visit the local maple store. Among the usual items they had something called maple cream soda. Surprisingly enough, it tasted almost like I was drinking carbonated maple sugar; kinda weird, but fortunately I like weird.
We then moved on to the point of our trip- hiking. We decided to tackle Mt. Cherry, which falls just under the 4,000 foot mark. The day was pretty hot and the trail was surprisingly steep for what was listed as a moderate hike. The only way my mom scaled the mountain was thanks to a walking stick that Rachel had bought for me, and even our dog needed to be carried in the backpack for part of the way down.
After the hike we were pretty tired and definitely ready to call it a day. Unfortunately when we got back to the house we found that all of the keys that we made didn't work. Apparently when my mom checked the keys she didn't realize that the key didn't actually lock or unlock the door; it simply turned around and around. Fortunately I had my pocket knife with me, which I used to unscrew a screen, make a few small incisions in the screen and sneak in through the kitchen window.
The next day was just more driving, which wasn't all that bad. Normally when I'm cooped up with my mom I get really annoyed with her, but this trip was different. We actually had conversations and a good time together. I don't know if it's just me mellowing at my old age of 22, but I guess its a change for the better.
And, as always:
Robin: "You can't get away from Batman that easy!"
Batman: "Easily."
Robin: "Easily."
Batman: "Good grammar is essential, Robin."
Robin: "Thank you."
Batman: "You're welcome."
1 comment:
Dang, I don't know which part of that is the most amazing: the fact that Porcupines can chew through metal, you have a forester, or that Maple Soda exists! And here I though New Hampshire was boring. Shame on me sir. Shame on me.
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