Following the mountain goat

Hunting season is officially over for us. And thank goodness. The farm needs attention, and I'm ready to stay out of the cactus.

I had another close encounter with the beloved desert plant last weekend. As if sitting in it weren't enough.

And it was all because I made a conscious choice to follow my husband over the mountains, through the canyons, up the rock walls, ...and eventually into the cactus.

Anyone who has ever traipsed through the mountains with Brandon knows he has the climbing abilities of a mountain goat.

I, on the other hand, do not.

I was always one of those kids everyone called grace. Due to my lack of it. Let's just say things haven't changed much.

I fared rather well on Friday, kept up with him, and really can't complain one bit about that day.

Saturday was a different story.

The morning was great. We made a nice little trek to a mountain top where we had a rock cubby hole and an excellent vantage point for glassing.

But for some crazy reason, Brandon wasn't satisfied to remain there all day. Despite the good view and all the deer we had seen. No, he wanted to go across to the next mountain, through a little draw, and up and around another mountain.

After all that, we didn't see one deer that evening.

Just before dark, we set off to make our way back to the trail. Brandon's "hunch" on the best way back led us to three different sets of rock bluffs, each with a 40 to 50 foot drop. Not exactly ideal.

So, we backtracked to find a new route. At this point, dark was quickly approaching. And Brandon was in a bigger hurry than usual. He was not handling my slower-paced mountain descent very well. But it was dark. And steep. I thought I was moving fast.

At some point when I was practically running to catch up with him, I got tangled in a cactus, tripped, and sent a giant piece of it into the flesh on my shin. When I finally caught up, I told him what had slowed me down some. He said, "Well let's get it out."

But I wanted off that mountain.

So we forged on.

By the time we arrived back at camp, all the rubbing my leg did on my overalls had broken off the cactus thorns flush with my skin. There was no pulling them out. For the following two days, my leg was red and puffy around the thorns, and I ended up removing some bits and pieces.

After all this, I had to watch him scale a rock above me Monday morning. I was supposed to follow. He was seriously rock climbing. Hanging mid-air from a giant bluff, where one slip of a hiking boot would have had dire consequences. I couldn't even watch him do it. No way was I taking that same route.

When he was halfway up, I yelled at him, "Brandon Leister, if you don't come off this mountain today, I will never forgive you." And I meant it.

Luckily, we found a different route for me. Still climbing across giant rocks, just not up the side of a completely vertical one.

Brandon had the opportunity to see me absolutely petrified this weekend. Like the kind of pure terror where tears are streaming down your face and you're shaking all over and just can't stop. He found it extremely entertaining.

Some of the rocks boulders on these mountains look like they could topple over on top of you any second. They are leaning on edge, supported by a corner, and stacked only against one another.

All I was doing to scare myself to death was climbing down from the exact same rocks I climbed up through. Only going down, I could see below me. The only way I got up those rocks in the first place was by telling myself, "These rocks hold bears. They can hold 140 pounds of human."

That's right. The fact the rocks I was climbing into held bears was my only comforting thought.

But, I made it down (obviously). Without a scratch.

Well, except for the remaining cactus thorns in my leg, anyway.

Which brings us to Tuesday night. Three days after the cactus incident. I got out a pair of tweezers, and pulled this out of my leg:

A full half-inch of cactus thorn.

There's just one left I can feel under the skin, but can't find where it needs to pop out. Other than that, I'm all healed.

And that's what I get for following a mountain goat.

Husband of the century. Still under debate.

The night we returned from Brandon's deer hunt, I was unloading the cooler and heard him banging on the back door in the office, flashlight in hand.

I let him in and realized he had a regular flashlight, not his scorpion-hunting blacklight flashlight.

"What were you doing out there?"

"Oh, I was just checking to see if I was going to get the Husband of the Year Award."

"Oh really? And how did that go for you?"

"I'm more like Husband of the Century. We have green grass. And I'm not talking about green bermuda grass. Green rye grass."

"So how does that qualify you for Husband of the Century? A green yard was practically a prenup for us. It's the only way I agreed to move to the desert."

"I said I would give you a summer yard. I didn't say anything about a winter yard."

"Well, I just said a green yard. Period."

Thank you

To all veterans for their service, and their families for their sacrifice:

If you give a mouse a...saltine cracker

Wednesday morning, just after breakfast, one of our big hay customers calls to set up a load. He had mentioned to Brandon he might be coming out to visit sometime soon, so at the end of the conversation, Brandon asks if he knew when that might be yet.

Bob from Texas says, "Well, we'll be pullin' out of here Sunday, and should be at your place Monday mornin'."

Brandon stammers a bit, and I stare at the phone with a dropped jaw. (Dude's from Texas. He talks loud. I could hear everything.)

You see, Brandon's deer hunt (and our last hunting excursion for 2009) is this weekend. We planned to head out Thursday afternoon and return Monday evening.

Which, luckily, bought us a little time with Bob.

Brandon informed him we would be out of town until Monday and asked if we could plan to get together Tuesday instead. Bob agreed.

Because the other problem with this situation was I had been out of town until the night before this phone call. And we all know what happens when men are left alone in the house.

In fact, the day before I returned home, I received a call from Brandon. Just to warn me my house was a disaster. No other reason for the call. It didn't help much that we've been running in and out on all these hunting trips for the past few weeks either. Or that we have processed two giant elk in the middle of our kitchen recently.

So, Wednesday quickly turned into a cleaning rampage to muck out our house. While I was at it, I rearranged the pantry and cleaned out the fridge.

And the pantry part is where the mouse comes in. We have these two boxes on the bottom shelf of the pantry to hold things like granola bars, popcorn, trail mix, craisins, raisins, pretzels, etc.

I realized our snack items could be condensed into one box. But when I got to the bottom of the granola bar box, I found a shredded wrapper and pieces of granola and mouse...residue.

I began sifting through the other things on that shelf to look for more evidence. I moved things around as slowly as possible, trying not to disturb any slumbering mice. I'm not really scared of critters like that, I just don't really want them jumping out and surprising me.

Sure enough, the unopened box of saltine crackers had a whole in one corner, and one stack of crackers had been disturbed.

Brandon came in a bit later, and I said, "Hey, I think we have a mouse in the pantry," and showed him the shreds of granola bar wrapper and cracker box.

"Yep, sure do. It probably came from a camping trip. I've never had one in the house before."

"Well, we did have the box of crackers when we were camping."

Then, this morning, I noticed the little sucker had tried to make his way into a bag of tortilla chips. So I found our mouse poison and we set it up on the bottom shelf, where everything he has tried to eat has been located.

And now we wait.

The only problem? Leaving town.

After Brandon set the bait, I said, "Great, now the mouse is going to eat that stuff and die tonight and we we're going to find him rotting in our pantry in four days."

Brandon: "Yeah, and Bob and his wife are going to walk in here Tuesday wondering what the smell is, and I'm going to have to tell them my wife just doesn't keep a tidy house."