oh to live in the woods, a cautionary tale

Some days I wake up in wonder. I look out our living room windows and it seems that we live, not just in the trees, but in a tree house. A sea of green, slowly changing to reds and golds. Dappled sunlight, babbling brooks, forest paths. It's all there, right outside our door.

And then some days living in the woods is not quite so picturesque. Like when these suckers wake you up at two in the morning doing a seriously good impression of someone being murdered on your front porch while trying to carry off your cat. (Scary fisher cat picture courtesy of Google, because I'm sure as shit not going out to snap a photo of one in the middle of the night)

Or when you have to put EVERYTHING in glass jars because, people, there are mice.

Or when, yesterday, you sat at your desk, industriously working away, only to be distracted by strange scrabbling noises. At first, thinking it was your missing- possibly taken by fisher cats- feline, you check outside. No dice. Then you move to the basement where a manic squirrel is trying desperately to climb through the basement windows,  up the walls,  along the plumbing, over your shelves and though your previously neatly arranged crafts supplies. Keeping calm of course, you use your husbands prized fly fishing rod to try to coax it away from the (closed) windows and toward the (now open) basement door while your dog tries to squeeze through the cat door to come to your aid (ok, that part was pretty funny). And then, in a last ditch effort to escape, crazy squirrel leaps ON TO YOUR VEST causing you to scream  loudly, throw the fly rod in the air, fling off your vest and, scare the hell out of the utility guy who only came to mark your underground lines so you can put in a driveway fence.

I bet you wish you lived in the woods, right?