40 Pounds of Housecat, One Naked Man, and One Field Mouse

I am the naked man.  Well, technically, I was the naked man early yesterday morning when a ruckus brought me from a dead sleep and sent me running through the house.

Never mind what that looked like.

The ruckus, by the time I reached the living room, had dulled to something of a muffled romping around the carpet.  I flipped on the cove light and discovered a field mouse weaving around on the living room floor with both of my cats following along like two obese and bungling shadows.

With incompetent cats such as mine, this kind of thing could go on for hours.

I scampered off to the kitchen and began opening cupboards in search of a mouse-catching-whatever.  Coffee cup?  Nope.  Next cupboard.  Plate?  Picture mouse leaping onto my arm followed by cats.  Next.  Next.  Holy hell!  Next!

Salad bowl!

I swept the salad bowl from the cupboard and whisked back into the living room.  By the time I reached my 40 pounds of housecat, they and the field mouse were more or less sitting there in a knitting circle.  “Excuse me, fellas,” I said.  I scooped the mouse into the bowl and then trotted outside to fling the mouse at the moonlit prairie.

You are now welcome to picture me naked.

 

When I entered the illuminated house again, I found my two overfed fuzzballs exactly where I last left them.  Clearly they were bewildered.  “So that’s all you have?” I asked.  “You’re just going to sit there and shed hair?”

--Mitchell Hegman

Now This

Being mistaken on occasion is natural in all human endeavor, but to be constantly misinformed requires the internet.

--Mitchell Hegman

Scotch

A single glass of Scotch is stain remover for the mind. Two glasses of Scotch are how wars begin.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Living Fireworks Display

Cow Parsnip plants can launch themselves up to eight feet above the ground before mid-summer.  Once they reach high above all the plants that surround them, they explode into clusters of flowers that resemble brilliant white firework displays frozen in mid-explosion.

The stem of the cow parsnip plant is edible.  According to one of my reference books, Plants of the Rocky Mountains, cow parsnip was widely used by native peoples as a vegetable.

That girl and I started our Fourth of July at the cabin surrounded by cow parsnips.  I have posted a couple of photographs I captured of the flower clusters.  Most of the flowers at the cabin are between four and five feet above the ground.

--Mitchell Hegman

To What I Awakened

If you’re an even number, the odds are stacked against you.  

--Mitchell Hegman

Planning and Implementation, Part 2

I assume that everyone desires to have a bison skull their own.  If someone ever walked up to you and said “I have a bison skull if you are interested,” you would likely answer, as I did: “Hell, yes, I am interested!”

I acquired the bison skull and then built my cabin around the skull.

Now the story.

I acquired my bison skull from a fairly odd (but agreeable) stone mason who had—as a second avocation—a business where he raised carrion-eating beetles.  He used the beetles to clean the flesh from bones and skulls.  For the sake of my own sanity, I did not ask too many questions.  I purchased the bison skull from the mason with a thought in mind that the bison skull would find a spot high on a wall under a wall-washing light in my cabin.

I did not have a cabin at the time I acquired the skull, but had recently purchased some mountain property and was in the process of designing the cabin.  I started working on the cabin in 2003.  Over the years since, I have spent countless weekends hauling materials over Flesher Pass and tinkering with my hand and power tools to I bring the cabin from the ground and began finish work.  Three days ago, I finally hung the bison skull on the wall of my cabin.

  

Posted is a photograph of the skull taken outside my cabin and a photograph the skull after I hung it on the wall.

--Mitchell Hegman

Planning and Implementation, Part 1

In a sense, I built my house around a slightly used ceiling paddle fan.   Many years ago, at the time I started to seriously consider planning and building a house of my own, my employer gave me a fairly expensive paddle fan he was replacing in his own house.

The fan was the first item gathered for the new house.  I envisioned the fan on a white vaulted ceiling in an open living space.  As my wife and I designed the house we eventually constructed—with the help of so many beautiful friends—I knew exactly how the house fit around the fan I held in storage.  For almost five years, each time I saw the fan sitting there, I imagined seeing it on the ceiling in the house we would build.

We poured the concrete foundation for our house in the summer of 1990 and waited to begin sinking nails in dimension lumber until April of the following year.  In November of 1991, I installed the paddle fan in my living room as one of the very last details before we moved in.

I recall being stupidly happy as I climbed my ladder to hang the fan.  Hanging the fan felt like smashing a bottle of champagne against the bow of a giant ship and releasing the ship to the sea.

I will likely be upgrading to a newer fan in a few weeks.  Posted is a photograph of the fan still at work in my living room during yesterday’s heat.

--Mitchell Hegman