Turtle Tank

When you were a kid, did you have a critter collection?  Did you catch lightning bugs and put them in a jar?  Or capture baby bunnies and try to keep them alive?  Ours were always dead the next morning.  Something about the shock and trauma of being caught and handled.  Did you fill a bucket with toads?

Our house is not at our farm.  We were lucky to find a habitable dwelling in the country, much less one that was handy to where we worked. That being said, if we needed an item at our house, it was a good bet we could come up with something at the farm and drag it home with us. That is how we got a small stock tank in which to keep the kids’ menagerie.

It was about 4 feet across, and if you propped one side up on a couple of bricks, you could have a pond on one side and dry habitat on the other. A maple tree provided plenty of shade.

My kids were always on the lookout for box turtles. The best place to find them was when they crawled across the country roads.

“Stop the car, Mom!  Can you get that turtle for us?”

One must assume the average person knows why you would never, ever bring a turtle inside a vehicle. If we were close enough to the house, good ol’ mom would apprehend said turtle, roll down the drivers’ side window and proceed to the hacienda holding the creature as far from the car as her arm would reach. Just in case you haven't ever held a wild turtle, they STINK! The turtle itself probably doesn't reek. Its self-defense mechanism is to emit a foul smelling urine that seeps into your hands and takes two or three days to wash off. The safest way to pick them up is from the top and hold the side edges of their shells. Keep your hands away from the tail!

Into the tank it went, while said youngsters raided the refrigerator for pieces of lettuce or carrot tops. It was nothing unusual to have three or four turtles in the tank during the summer. The kids diligently caught hop toads and added them to the menagerie, but they kept jumping out. This mom didn’t know toads could jump that high. Did you know toads also pee in reaction to being picked up? Their urine doesn't smell so bad, although I think that's why dogs don't bother them after one experience. It must taste terrible.

One day, about this time of year, I was rotor-tilling the garden plot with the Massey-Ferguson in preparation for spring planting.  It was cool and the toads were still burrowed in.  I unearthed one and hollered for the kids to come and get it.  My four-year-old daughter came running and took the new find to the tank.

Suddenly, I could hear her screaming over the noise of the rotor-tiller.  

What the heck?  Did a wasp sting her?

By the time I ran to the tank, not more than 20 yards away, the toad was in pieces and my innocent daughter was in total melt-down. Four turtles equal four toad limbs to tear off. Did I forget to remind the kids to feed their turtles? 

The carnivorous turtles were released and the stock tank returned to the farm where we never used it to corral wild animals again.

As God is my witness, I thought all those other toads jumped out.

Mint Juleps

Grandma Selma raised spearmint. It grew in a two-foot wide strip of dirt between the foundation of her house and the sidewalk. Mint is a perennial which spreads by runners which live just under the surface of the soil. The walkway prevented the plants from escaping and taking over the yard. Mint will grow in the shade, but it thrives in sunlight unless it gets too dry.

When we purchased our home, she graciously allowed me to transplant a few sprigs with a warning to keep it contained. I needed some greenery on the barren north side of the garage. Just in case it tried to get away, I made a border of bricks, burying them at an angle about 6 inches deep.  The mint transplanted well and stayed where I put it the first year.

The following year the vigorous underground runners crept up to the bricks, grew right over the top of them and took root on the other side.  The next year I chopped some out and gave it to my dad. The mint grew as fast as the recipe for Herman Friendship Cake. The more I pulled out and gave away, the more it spread until eventually a 10 X 20 area of my flower garden was knee deep in fragrant mint.

And it was durable! Kids, dogs, cats, nothing hurt it. We had a flock of ducks that liked to waddle through the patch catching the insects that were attracted to the plants. My dad used it as a mosquito repellent. In the early summer evenings, before he checked on his cattle, he would rub a handful of leaves on his arms and neck to keep the pesky bloodsuckers away.

After baking in the sun all his life, his skin must have been tougher than mine. I tried his all-natural bug dope once when I was mowing. I ended up staying in the house with what amounted to a chemical burn from the volatile oils in the leaves.

I gave up trying to corral the mint and let it grow, occasionally tricking my friends into taking some starts. Just for fun, I made mint jelly. You are supposed to serve it with lamb. Since I didn't know how to prepare lamb, I gave the confection away to anyone who would take it.  Dropping a few leaves in boiling water makes an all-natural air freshener. It is easy to dry and store for use in the winter. Just pick it before it blooms.

I received a phone call from a lady who identified herself as the wife of our meter reader. She had learned through him that we had a bed of spearmint. (I bet his shoes smelled like mint every month because he had to wade through it to get to the meter.) She explained that their daughter was getting married in a few weeks and that she and the bridegroom wanted to drink mint juleps at the reception. This lady and her husband had mint juleps at their own wedding.

She went on to say that they had checked into ordering mint leaves from a florist. Unfortunately, if they had to pay floral prices, they wouldn't be able to afford the drinks. Getting to the point, she asked if I would consider selling them some mint leaves.

Sell them? Lady, you can HAVE some. Would you like some plants so you can grow it yourself? Her husband must have told her how much mine had spread over the years, as she quickly assured me all she wanted was fresh leaves.

Oh, wait. I can't give this lady any of my mint, especially if it is going into beverages. My conscience wouldn't allow it. I sheepishly told her about the kids, and dogs, and ducks. Especially the ducks.

Undaunted, she assured me there was no problem.

No, really, ma'am. You don't understand about ducks. Ducks poop everywhere they go. Even if they haven't pooped on the mint, their feet are dirty, and they have walked on it. Really, I can not let you have any leaves.

Her daughter must have really had her heart set on drinking mint juleps at her wedding because I was informed any foreign substance would wash right off.

A couple of weeks later my meter reader, along with his wife, daughter and future son-in-law, showed up and picked mint while I stood by wringing my hands and wondering if duck poop caused salmonella or botulism. Did people catch typhoid fever these days? Apparently, my fears were unfounded. I didn't hear of an outbreak of food poisoning.

I planted the first spearmint starts in 1976. During the extreme drought of 2010 through 2012, a lot of the plants died. I still have a few plants in the shade of the garage and have been encouraging those to spread. By next summer it should fill in the gaps enough to start trying to give it away again. 

If anyone in my area wants to make a mint julep, I no longer have ducks.  :*)

CAT BATHROOM

In the early 1980's the County repaved the blacktop road that bordered one of our fields. The road engineer asked if we would allow them to stage some of their equipment near the intersection. This included a cone of sand which was used to spread on the road after it was resurfaced and sealed with oil. When the work was finished, we were left with several cubic yards of crushed rock consisting of particles 1/2" or smaller. The road department didn't want the expense of removing it, so we were stuck with the inconvenience of farming around it.

Occasionally, we thought of a use for the sand and chipped away at the pile.

We had two kids, and they got old enough to play outdoors without constant supervision. I thought it would be fun if they had a sandbox to play in. Their dad thought it would be a lot of work to get the sand from the field to our house.

He must have had a boring day because he gathered up empty seed bags and a shovel and transported some of the pile to the house. Did you know you can put 100 pounds of sand in a sack designed to hold 50 pounds of corn seed? 

Ed proceeded to pour sand into a pile in my flower garden. I cringed but didn't say anything. We found some 2x6 boards to make it an actual sand BOX. I gathered up plastic cups and anything else I could think of for our son and daughter to play with and led them outside to see the surprise. As they were walking down the steps, one of the cats was busily staking a claim. The confused children wondered what was so exciting about a cat scraping the sand over the hole he had dug. 

YUCK! 

Even though mom removed that portion of sand along with the cat poop, the two kids never played in it. Not once.

The cats loved it though, and my poor flowers were never the same.