Raccoons Blew the Transformer, The Calf Broke Through The Fence, The Dog Ate The Turkey....

Every single time  my husband Michael attends a conference or leaves for a fishing or hunting weekend, something  major goes wrong on our hobby farm. This is not  simply the delusions of a paranoid woman, all my kids are well aware of this pattern. Just four months ago,  for example, Michael was gone for two weeks and a total of ten accidents and catastrophes occurred. Part of the disaster list from his last absence is as follows:

1. The fuel tank was red tagged which meant the heating company cancelled oil deliveries until we replaced the tank and this was January. We turned the heat to a very low setting and heated the house with  the woodstove alone.

2.The dog figured out how to open the fridge and devoured the entire meat and cheese drawer. The door was damaged; we resorted to pushing a chair up against the fridge door.

3.The palm sander died . I was refinishing the old pine floors with it the slow way.

4. A friend accidentally damaged the 100 + year old stained glass in the front door pushing the door with his shoulder.It took Michael three days to restore it.

5. 20 cm. of snow fell and my husband is the only one who can drive the tractor which plows our long lane and our neighbours'.

6.A chair that needed to be glued, fell apart as a visitor sat on it.

 As I complained dramatically to a friend, one afternoon, disbelief flashed across her face. Katie, Rachel and Lucy all chimed in, "No ,really; it is true." We all jumped in to the conversation ,adding evidence from over the years. This is a shortened version of our catastropy list which we attribute to Michael's twice yearly departures from out property.

A.Wolf,  a dog we  were dog sitting, ate one of our turkeys, appalling  the subburb kids who were tenting at our place.

B. The calf escaped to the far field; the kids and I ran through knee high drifts  of snow for over an hour using a bucket of grain as bait.

C.The squirrels moved in and ate all the bird seed.

D.The horse broke out, crossed the road and had all of us running or pedalling bikes as we tried to corner him in a huge field.It tok a looong time to get a rope attached to his bridle.

E. The basement flooded.

F. Three baby racoons were chased up a hydro pole by our wonderful guard dog and one blew the transformer  as he attempted to climb down; he  died as a result. The electrical crew , who had arrived in a huge cherry picker truck, argued whether they really wanted to go up there and rescue the wild racoons.

" Do you want to go up there George?"

"Who me? No way. Why don't you do it Harry?"

"No way"

They turned to me and stated,

"Tell you what . We'll turn your power on and just come back tomorrow after they blow the transformer again."

David decided to simply open his upstairs window, point a gun out it and take the racoons out of their misery. The power stayed on.

This pattern has been repeated countless times and is a source of great amusement as we look back. However each time it actually took place,we were all lamenting Dad's absence and praying for his return before anything else could go wrong.