We’re 12 inches into a rainfall shortage now, and all the trees are surrendering their leaves earlier than usual in exhausted dehydration.

Tonight I went to check my rain gauge on the off chance that yesterday’s cloudiness produced something. This is what I found.

I left for work this morning and found this gift. Right in the middle of my front walkway, which is comprised of two sheets of weathered OSB with black-widow infested coir welcome mats at each end. Because I’m friendly as well as classy.

Anyway, when other people use their work computers to—they think—surreptitiously surf internet porn or while away the hours with celebrity gossip sites, I google “coyote scat.” I hope I am the first person in the world to have that phrase turn up in a performance review.

But seriously. Which of the myriad mammals that share their territory with me left this calling card? Readers, your conjectures in the comments please.

I woke up at seven this morning to rain pouring on the skylight over my bed. It’s the first time I can remember awakening to such a hard rain all summer, and given our record heat and dryness this year the sight made me happy instead of glum as grey skies usually do. I got out of bed and went outside to drag all my potted plants into the deluge. As I was coming back in, I glanced toward the nice little pond that had formed in my crawl space well and saw my old friend Toad.

Toad had been living in the doorway to the crawlspace for quite a while, but then disappeared around the time of the black snake incident. I figured Toad was a casualty of close quarters, though this particular toad is quite large—about the size of the fingerless part of my not insubstantial hands. He’s also a striking black, exactly the color of oxidized silver.

I’m glad to see Toad back. I love the way he sits like an oracle in the doorway, all quiet and wise.

Finally got around to picking up the piles around the back of the house. Stacks of lumber and concrete, old stakes, all sorts of junk finally got “tidied away.” Which really means it just got hauled into the woods for what may be permanent storage. I’m a bonafide redneck now.

And I found three black widows in the process, so it makes me feel even better to get this area cleaned up.

Before:

After:

Much improved, right?

Tonight’s project was to clean out the shed attached to the well house. The other day while approaching the house, I was embarrassed to note that all the crap sitting around there made my place look a bit too redneck for my taste. Not that there’s anything wrong with rednecks. They are some of my best neighbors, and in fact, I could use a good redneck right about now. Preferably a tall, ruggedly handsome one who doesn’t talk much but cheerfully throws his rippling muscles into cleanup projects such as these. While I watch from the porch, sipping my favorite summer soda.

But no such hero appeared and thus it was up to me to haul a year’s worth of leftover construction materials—HardiPanel, which is HEAVY, trim board, cedar closet paneling from the old house, bales of wire, cinder blocks, and mosquito-breeding pieces of dirty bunched up plastic—out of the shed.

With a relatively clean slate I raked up a bunch of moldy straw that had been there for almost a year, along with some of last fall’s leaves. I dragged my rake through huge cobwebs and warily ducked as disturbed wasps swarmed about my head.

I felt better as soon as soon as I could see the dirt floor and clean foundation inside the shed. With the recent snake drama around here, and in the well house area no less, I want to eliminate all the scary hidey-holes and piles that dot my property. Thank goodness the only scaly reptile I encountered tonight was a cute black ringneck snake. He didn’t stick around for pictures, but he was perfect and just the size I like my snakes—about as big as an earthworm.

With all the organic debris hauled into the woods and added to my compost pile, and the trash sorted from the usable materials sorted from the bonfire fuel, I reloaded the shed leaving plenty of space to walk around and check for unwelcome visitors. I still wouldn’t call it pristine, if for nothing but the simple fact that I have way too much leftover building material that I need to store somewhere. It was dark, thus no photos, but I think it looks a bit better, and I think it’s progress. Next up: the garage!

We got started on the coop midmorning last Saturday, at the beginning of our area’s first summer heat wave. The coop will be 8′x12′ and have a shed roof and a storage room.

First we nailed together the presure-treated base and studs. The whole contraption sits on skids and cinder blocks lest my new house make this country property look too classy. I leveled the base, and then we added floor joists 16″ on center.

Then came three sheets of pressure-treated plywood nailed into the joists.

Over that went a layer of OSB, overlapping the pressure-treated plywood joints for stability. This floor is rock solid! As the light was fading, we mocked up the positioning for the front and back walls, tinkering to get the right proportion and roof slope:

Both Dad and I had worked right through the heat until 10:00 p.m. at night and made ourselves sick. Working in full sun on an almost 100-degree, humid Virginia day is no good. We learned our lesson and planned Sunday’s work day to start at 7:00 a.m., with a break during the heat of the afternoon.

The next morning started nice and early, but already the temperature was in the 80’s. We laid out and framed the front and back walls, using the newly built platform:

We tipped the walls into place and temporarily secured them in order to frame the door and window openings, which aren’t shown below. And that’s when the weekend ran out, at 10:00 p.m. Sunday night.

Monday morning I got up and got ready for work. On my way out, I stopped by the garage to feed and water the guineas. I knew something was wrong when I tried to open the garage door and was met by brief resistance followed by a flurry of feathers. You guessed it. Another jailbreak. So there I was, powdered and perfumed and the clock rapidly ticking toward 9:00 a.m., when I was due in the office…and I was again chasing guineas around the garage.

I got them all caught, one at a time because they are so big they need two hands to secure, and hit the road. Walking into work, I was still picking guinea feathers out of my hair.

Well, my dad sprang into action that evening and when I’d returned from work, he’d whacked together an interim housing solution for the birds using two sheets of plywood framed into a bottomless box set on thick plastic in the garage. These expansive new digs, 8′x4′x4′, were just what the birds needed. He made access doors at both ends for easy cleaning, and I stapled chicken wire to the top and filled the box with pine shavings. The birds love their new home, and are enjoying the chance to stretch their wings and fly from perch to perch. It was really a great idea because they’d definitely outgrown their last cardboard box, and were obviously wanting more space! Plus, it takes some of the time pressure off getting the coop proper finished.

It was very late when I shut the garage up Monday night and headed back to the house. I heard a rustling in the field and with my flashlight discerned two green eyes coming toward me across the field. Some animal, with its head held low, was headed right for me. I got ready to do battle with my Mag-Lite, but when it came into view I saw it was a tiny fawn. Once the creature realized that I was most definitely not its mother, it turned away and slunk around the driveway and off into the night.

I came home from work Thursday night to find the hay had been cut in the fields around the house.

As much as I enjoyed the tall hay glowing in the sunlight, I like this fresh and clean look too. And just in time! I was out late last night buying material for the chicken coop that Dad and I are going to start building in the field today. It’s no small undertaking, this structure, so stay tuned for progress reports. Here’s the coop thus far:

Last night, the farmer who takes the hay showed me a photo he took of a gigantic black bear that lives in the neighborhood. I had suspected as much after seeing some incriminating looking bear poo under the cherry tree. A lone bear doesn’t worry me much, but he’s seen mothers with two and three cubs as well, and that’s not a situation I’d want to walk into in the dark of night.

At last count, the predators I am battling in this quest to keep birds include: fox (saw one run though the back yard the other night), raccoons, snakes, coyotes, hawks, eagles, weasels, mice, rats, dogs, and now bear. A more sane person might ask, “Why bother?!!”

I was working around the yard tonight watering plants and tending the guineas when I remembered the zuchini bread I had in the oven. I ran up the back porch and was met face to face with the black snake crawling right up the wall of my house next to the door. Nothing like a black snake on a white house for graphic effect. Or for eliciting the expletive heard round the neighborhood. Of course, I’d forgotten to unlock the back door, so I had to leave the snake and run around to the front door. By the time I got the bread out of the oven and the back door open, the snake had fallen off the house and was coiled on the porch.

I instantly knew where this was headed, or should I say, where he was headed. And sure enough, the second he saw me (must have made quite the impression Tuesday night), he slipped off the porch and right into the crawlspace that is so not secure. I tried to pin him with a two by four, but he had too much momentum and disappeared behind the insulation lining the crawlspace. Like the unwitting dupe of horror films the world over, I followed a large snake into a small, dark, enclosed space. Not sure what I thought I could do in there, but I figured I could assess the situation. Which I did for about .5 seconds—just long enough to see a black tail disappear between rustling yellow batts—before I retreated post-haste.

In truth, I may have willed this creature here to help me. Starlings are nesting in my back porch eaves where there should be a ceiling but isn’t yet. They keep churning out babies and pooping all over my nicely painted deck. I didn’t want to finish the ceiling until after the babies had fledged, but they seem to be coming in rounds. I admit to wishing they’d disappear without me actually having to be the one to do it. Cue the black snake, who’s may just be here to to do me a favor.

I got home tonight from a busy day at work and thought I’d seek some agricultural therapy. My dad got me a new string trimmer last weekend and I was itching to see if I could start it and wreck havoc on some overgrown parts of the farm. But first I headed to the well house to grab my safety glasses. I was just about to open the door when I looked down and saw this:

“Huh,” I actually said out loud. Truth is, I’d been expecting a snake in this structure since I bought the property. It’s cool and damp and home to mice, and I always felt the energy of a snake whenever I went in it. And here he was.

Unfortunately, he presented me with a quandry. I have a great respect for snakes, and know that they are excellent predators for eliminating rats and mice and other undesirables. But I also keep poultry, some of which are still small enough that they’d be an easy lunch. So what to do? I didn’t really know. All I really could think of was trying to temporarily displace this snake so I could grab my safety glasses and start weed whacking.

I grabbed a shovel that was in the wellhouse and chased him out. It was a laborious process, moving this heavy churning mass with a shovel. In truth, I am grateful to this snake because I’d spent a lot of time today thinking about my yet-to-be-built chicken coop, and by watching how this snake moved, I gained a new understanding of the measures I must undertake to predator-proof my enclosure. I mean, this thing went straight up the wall and could squeeze through the quarter inch between the door and the threshold. It was beautiful, and impressive.

Once I got the snake outside, I had no luck capturing him in a bucket. So I used my shovel to toss him a few feet at a time toward the back of the property. What is absolutely uncanny is that each time he landed, with a thud that sounded like a thick rope hitting a deck, he was always pointed toward the wellhouse and began immediately to slither toward it. It was baffling. So I kept tossing him, further and further from the building, to the edge of the field. I tried to stuff him in the fox hole, figuring the two could keep each other company, but he wouldn’t go. And then I gave up because I signed up for a hot date with a string trimmer, not a black snake.

With that level of determination, he will no doubt be back. And I am pleased to make his acquaintance. We will just have to find some way to coexist, because I store my beer in the wellhouse and damned if this five-foot long black reptile is going to come between me and my Midas Touch.