Why I am a Hill Troll

Living in rural Sonoma County, with the ticks and the mud and the wild pigs, sliding roads, roaming cows, and grouchy neighbors, who luckily live too far away to be nasty to your face and must rely on writing insinuating comments in the road association newsletter, can be a challenge. But I know I'm up to it because I've lived here for two and a half years now without anything more dire than a strained back from that time I tried to push our 800-lb diesel generator into the shed. I have two dogs, one of whom is psychotic, and two cats who will only rarely let me touch them (the cats live in the barn since both dogs are cat chasers).

Mad Jack is the yellow dog in the pic on the left; he's a Black Mouth Cur. He is really crazy right now, but we're hoping with good training he'll make it. Rose is a Catahoula Leopard Hound that we got at the shelter not too long ago. She is very sweet and loving, but has a lot of fear issues due to her 6-month stint at the local no-kill shelter. Kudos to her for adapting to life outside the big house.

You might wonder what a person who lives 2 hours away from the nearest 7-11 does for a living. I'm wondering that also, as I peruse the scads of job opportunities available to me over the interweb. I may soon be earning a good living stuffing envelopes, selling Amway, or maybe I'll take the easy route and start a new pyramid scheme.

But these problems are trivial when compared with the trials I face every day in the wilderness. Mudslides, rattlesnakes, skunks, wild pigs blocking the path to the outhouse at 2 am...but worst of all are my bitter enemies, the raccoons. I used to think they were cute (actually, I still think they are cute, but in a horrific, bleeding-ulcer sort of way), and I was charmed by how they would sit up and look at us through the sliding glass doors after they ate all the cats' food. But then they kept eating the cat food, more and more of it, and they brought their friends and family; we tried moving the cat food to the bathhouse, where a window high, high up is accesible from a minute ledge-this worked for a few months, but then they got in again. We moved the food to the barn, same story. (We can't feed the cats indoors as they are mostly feral, plus the dog issue) However, this is not why the raccoons are my enemies. The real reason is the peach trees. Every year so far, they have eaten all the peaches from all 16 trees, getting them while they were still too green to pick. They politely left all the pits in neat piles under each tree. I hope all that fruit gave them the runs.

This year I'm going to try bird netting over the trees to see if that dissuades them. Why can't they eat all the persimmons, which I loathe?

I am afraid that the paragraphs above may not have provided any insight into why I am a Hill Troll. So I'll tell you: the simple reason is that I am rather trollish, and I live in the hills.