Definition of ratification as taken from the dictionary of Lynne:

Rat-i-fi-ca-tion:
The infiltration of one or more packrats inside the cabin, thereby allowing for one heck of a packrat party at our expense.

UGH. I hate packrats! We’ve always had to deal with them up here at the cabin getting under the hood of the truck and building nests, but NEVER in the house. You probably remember my writing about them.

Packrats love to collect things. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the things they hoard, just whatever attracts them at the moment. I guess they are known to drop an item they are carrying for another one if they like it better.

Before you start thinking oh, how cute! think again. They are not good to have around!

We got an email after we had left New Jersey from the people who watch and act as caretakers of our cabin in our absence. They said they had come over the other day to turn on our fridge and he found quite the mess. They had just been over to the cabin the week before to check on it and it was fine then, so at least the rodents hadn’t been inside for very long.

We didn’t know the extent of damage, only that it had been messed up and the unwanted visitors had been on the kitchen countertops, window sills, the bed, etc. With this in mind we gathered an arsenal of cleaning products at the grocery in Laramie.

The poor man scrubbed away the pee and vacuumed up what he could of all the rat turds and left windows open to air it out. By the time we arrived there was no odor (thank you Larry!) and it was hard to tell anything was amiss.

We were so tired and with the fiasco with the internet not working, we did minimal cleaning before falling into bed. I disinfected all kitchen surfaces including the stove, and most of the window sills, the table and anything that food would touch. Our bed looked okay and we couldn’t see that it had been bothered other than the rat running across the top of it, but we didn’t plan to sleep on top of the bedspread!

Then the de-Ratification began. Yesterday morning we tore the cabin apart, from top to bottom and cleaned every surface. Furniture pulled out, swept behind and floors mopped. Every flat surface was dusted and polished or cleaned with disinfectant. It was quite the job. We aired out the bed linen and changed the sheets. Upholstered chairs and couch were sprayed with Febreeze just in case. Nothing was left undone. Now the cabin looks great! We hadn’t given it such a deep cleaning in years.

While cleaning I found a packrat’s stash in one of the drawers of the breakfront we keep puzzles in and various things. When I saw it I knew for certain it was packrats and not just mice or chipmunks. Take a look.

Before I realized what I was looking at I had removed a whole bunch of cat toys. At first I thought I had put them there, but I didn’t. So, here in the above photo we have: two stingy dried up cloves of garlic, one liquid cold pill (the orange thing), one piece of aluminum foil, cat toys, a pine cone, a nub of what was left of a candle,  a battery (just in case) and a piece of popcorn. Such treasures!

Larry stopped by this morning to see how we were doing and he said that at first he thought someone had broken in as there were towels, dried flowers and just things all over the place. Then when he smelled (and saw) the pee trails and rat turds he knew. But how did they get in? Good question.

We still are not sure how they got inside the house. I saw that above the fireplace screen there was some missing mortar with straw sticking out of the tiny gap. I took a clothes hanger and poked it around up inside the gap and rat turds and bits of nest fell out. They can’t get out this tiny gap and into the house.

We explored the outside of the house and found that the where the fireplace meets the logs the mortar had fallen out and left a gap large enough for the rats to get inside the framing of the fireplace. Their nest is somewhere outside of the fire box (so opening and closing the flue has no effect on them) and inside the framing. No way to get at them. We can only close the gap and hope they don’t get trapped inside with no way to get out. Nothing worse than the smell of a dead rodent!

So far we haven’t found a good answer as to just how they got inside the house. I hate to poison things, but that is what we are going to have to do. We tossed some inside the gap so maybe they will dine on that and leave us alone. For now we are stuffing a tarp in the gap to keep them out. We have someone coming on Friday that was actually one of the people who worked on building the cabin, so hopefully he can help us “bridge the gap” in a more permanent way.

It’s always something up here!

We arrived yesterday at the cabin around 3:00 p.m. after doing several hours of shopping in Laramie . All of us were glad to finally get here, although the long drive of 1,850 some miles in two and a half days didn’t seem all that bad.

Our drive west took us through the rolling wooded hills of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately it was raining the entire way through that large state.

The trees grew less and the open fields became more plentiful in Ohio. Also, the sun came out in Ohio. Indiana was much the same and we had a beautiful sunrise on the day we left.

(photo taken in motion on purpose with the tree in the foreground.)

The state of Illinois is always a tough one. Not much to look at on the interstate and the suburbs of Chicago seem to go on forever. However, they do have Culver’s, my favorite fast food hamburger restaurant.

We hit rain again in Iowa but only halfway through the state this time. We passed a windmill blade being transported. It looked a bit like a huge fish out of water. Immense!

Nebraska is one huge state. We break it up by spending the second night about one-third of the way through in Grand Island. Yesterday it was nothing but fog, fog, and more fog. The hay rolls loomed eerily in the gloom.

After that, it’s all downhill from there. Well, only mentally speaking since physically we are constantly climbing in altitude. But the last day always goes fast and before we know it we are in Laramie doing the grocery shopping.

However, there are some pitfalls of only visiting the cabin one time per year. One I will talk about now and the major one I will leave until my next post.

We have both satellite TV and satellite internet access, both from different parties. We have a contract where we can switch them both off for six months of the year and have them on the other six months. This works great with the television and we never have any problems other than having to re-verify each time by calling the service.

The internet on the other hand has always been a bit hit and miss. Last year it worked like a charm from the moment we arrived—a hit. This year, however, it was very much a miss. It was not working! Poor Rick on the phone to them (which in order to get a strong enough signal to talk to them he has to stand outside) for over an hour the first time. It turns out the satellite we were on was having problems with the transponder that we were on, so they ended up switching us over to a new one. We had to wait an hour while they downloaded all the new information to our modem and that finally gave us a chance to have dinner at around 7:30 p.m. When Rick called them back one hour later and talked to the nice man in India with a thick accent, all was restored! Hurrah!

Now if the other problem was as easily solved … stay tuned.

Oh! I almost forgot the treasure we found at the top of our driveway while taking the dogs for a walk just before dark last night. This wonderful giant puffball mushroom! At first when we saw something large and white in amongst the sage we thought it was a piece of styrofoam or some other kind of trash. I’ve never seen one this big before. It was almost big enough to sit on like a stool!

Here it is as seen from the top.

And no, we are not eating it although they say that they are edible. It’s too pretty to disturb!

I’ll leave you with a photo of my breakfast this morning. Rick made delicious bran muffins which are kind of a tradition on our first morning here.

I am writing this totally whacked tonight so I don’t have anything much to say. The truck is mostly packed, the dogs are going crazy knowing that their crates are in the truck. We had our new washer and dryer delivered today (finally) but in the midst of packing up, so lots of commotion and turmoil all at the same time. I am ready to get out of here! Well, mentally ready but still things need to be done to finish up in the morning.

I might be blogging from the road or not. It just depends. For sure I will be blogging once we arrive at the cabin. Stay tuned!

I know you all might not be interested in these particular goings-on (is that a southern phrase {goings-on?}) but you did sign up for this so I hope you are ready for my “sort of” personal and almost-but-not-quite daily diary. You might just decide you want to unsubscribe.

After all, this is why I started this blog in the first place, to record my daily life for myself and those closest to me. Somehow it expanded to a slightly larger audience than that, but still small enough to feel comfortable (knowing the whole web is not open to reading my personal life just in case they cared) to just be me. Not that I haven’t ever been me, but I think you know what I mean. Most of you who are now members have been reading me long enough to know me even if you’ve never met me. I like that. Knowing that, I feel free. Able to say what I want. Well, within reason that is.

Tonight we sat down with a glass of wine (maybe two) on the deck before dinner and went through our recipes that we had selected as candidates for meals at the cabin.

For those of you that remember, our cabin is situated about a 45 minute drive away from the nearest town, which happens to be Laramie, Wyoming. The roads leading to our cabin our not paved, but dirt. Red dirt. Red dirt roads that can become washboarded and rough to travel over. Roads that have free-range cattle and antelope roaming freely over them. Once we are at the cabin it’s hard to pry us away for any reason. We can go a week (if we plan meals accordingly) not leaving the cabin environs except to go on nightly drives to see elk, etc.

For most people, this isolation would drive them crazy. Not us. We relish the opportunity to “tune out” from the stress of daily life. We take long walks with the dogs. We do jigsaw puzzles. We nap when we want to. We read when we want to. Heck, we do most things when we want to. The fewer the trips in to Laramie, the better.

All the more reason to plan out our eating strategy wisely. It’s not easy, but we seem to manage on the “less is more” strategy just fine. If you forget an ingredient there is no ringing up the neighbors to borrow something. No convenience store conveniently close.

I think we came up with some pretty tasty meals. We’ll get groceries on our way in to the cabin to last us up to four days and after that we’ll go in to town to do a bigger shop. Somewhere in Nebraska on the last day of travel I will unravel Rick’s list and organize it.

Bella, our ever present companion, helped us make the list. The devilish glint in her eye and big grin on her face says mom, when we leaving? can we go now? my beaver pond awaits!

Our cabin pulls us back like a malfunctioning compass, insisting that for us, west is the true north. Our souls resonate with those 70+ acres of rolling sage-covered high prairie hills. The deep gullies filled with aspen and pine. Bart’s Creek (named after our Bernese Mountain Dog Bart who loved the water) that runs in the spring. The beaver pond where Bella loves to “swim.”  The meadows where columbine and lupine grow. The moose, deer, and elk that sometimes grace our land with their presence. (Although the free-range cattle that also “grace our land” are unwanted visitors.) The coyote serenades at night. The Milky Way shining brightly in the night sky. The cabin made of hand trimmed logs. It’s part of us. Part of who we are.

And next week this time we’ll be arriving about now after three days on the road cooped up with three dogs and two cats and a packed Suburban full of all the necessities.  We’re on countdown now ...