the joys of country living

In Oklahoma, they refer to houses way out in the country as “in the sticks”. Yes, directions to my place include the phrase, “turn off the paved road”. We're 20 miles from the nearest city, unless you count the small shopping center to our north, 15 miles from here.

There are some major disadvantages to living where we do. Emergency personal can take 45 minutes to get to us, assuming they can find us at all. When gas prices were at their highest, we were spending over $200.00 a month to do just the basic driving. And the dirt roads mean my vehicles are always grungy.

In my opinion, the benefits of country living more than make up for the downfalls. There aren't neighbors living on top of us. It is peaceful here. At night, the sky lights up with stars horizon to horizon. Then there is the wildlife. 

We have deer, and coyotes and rabbits and opossums, and, yes, some skunks too. In the thicker parts of the woods we also have raccoons, but we don't see them very often. Tonight at dusk, though, my daughter and I had the rare privilege of a raccoon sighting. It was a real treat to come around the corner and spy the adolescent 'coon waddling along. A treat until I realized he was waddling toward the crawl space under my house.

I'm sure he'd come out of his home in the woods to get a little exotic food by way of the cats' dish. Which is great. I don't mind sharing with the critters. But I don't run a bed and breakfast, a fact I pointed out to the little guy very quickly. He hissed back at me and started to waddle faster. I shouted to my daughter and she ran around the side to cut him off, which set the fuzzbutt to grumbling.

It took us several minutes of strategic poking with a stick and quite a bit of yelling at my dog (who wanted some exotic food of her own)  to convince him to turn around and go home. My daughter, who is 8, enjoyed the whole experience. We talked about him as we nudged him along, about what raccoons eat, where they live and why it would be cruel to put him in a cage and keep him as a pet.

I guess maybe some of you read this and think of it as another draw-back to living in the sticks, and you can keep that opinion if you want it. I'll just go out with the flashlight now and make sure he's not bringing his brothers back for dessert.