highlights

There has been just too much excitement this week so I thought I'd fill you in with little anecdotes: our first night I went to bed early leaving x and lex with my mom and my grandparents. Usually the trash is hidden away before dark. It just didn't happen that way that night so when mom and the kids came back from their evening bathroom trip, who was holding the door to the camper? One happy skunk having a buffet in the trash. The kids froze, scared to death that the skunk may do something other than make them stink and require tomato and vinegar baths. My mom waved her flashlight at it like it was a magic taser and hollered, but that skunk just glared back, claiming it's territory. The kids climbed into the car and waited for the skunk to finish its meal. We haven't made that mistake again. That hasn't stopped the cleaver raccoons which have both brains and hands with thumblike claws. They will unlock your locked cooler, take out the goods and shut it again. One did it to us. It opened the cooler right up, took out my grapes, shut the cooler, had its feast right in front of our camper while we slept only to leave the torn bag and an empty stem where my fruit once was. Then, what does j do when he makes the discovery the next morning? He throws those grapes right back in the cooler like, maybe, I don't mind sharing my food with some ferrel animal.... Just kidding. We were smart enough to have ousted our trash the night before and our cooler was then functioning as an interim trash until we had time to deal with it. I could go on and on with man vs. Nature stories. We've been feeding the chipmonks by hand, seeing how far they will go for a peanut. They'll go pretty far. One year we tied a fishing wire around a peanut and reeled that chipmonk in, and did it hold on for its life. We had it swinging from one end of the site to the other. I know, I know, that is not a redneck thing to do at all, and PETA please no phone calls, no chipmonks were hurt in our silliness. Thissyear the kids simply named the rodents Ben 10 and saw how long they would Stay to be pet while they fed them. One of my favorite stories so far is not man vs nature but man vs man with my brother-in-law against two loud drunken neighbor campers that kept my nephews up with their drunken curses and threats against their partners (think, "I'm gonna f***ing kill you" etc.". The next morning my peaceful but very muscular bro puts on his favorite muscle shirt, bandana and heads over for a chat, which I hear went something like this: allen walks over to the group at their picnic table and says, "I hear you like to swear and threaten people. I have two boys who I don't like hearing that" eyeing the two offenders. He then takes his fist. And crushes the can in front of him."So we're cool?" He asks, before turning and walking away. The neighbors were gone within a couple hours. And imagine, those are only a few adventures.