Life in the woods

Roundtop is in the middle of a weeklong spate of nice weather—sunny, mild and windless. The evenings are cool, but that’s to be expected. If this weather continues for more than another week or so I will start to fret about the lack of rain, but I don’t need to worry about that just yet.

The comfortable weather makes working on the ever-growing underbrush that surrounds my cabin a comfortable chore before I start dinner in the evenings. The dogs help by walking alongside of me as I struggle with another armload. I take the brush down my driveway, across the lane and drop it in the woods over there. Just when I think I’m making some headway, the forest grows some more overnight, and I’m back to where I started again. The dogs don’t seem to mind that at all. They think following me back and forth is part of their job, and they are happy to have a job.

Baby Dog tends to take having a job too seriously, though, especially on nights with a full or nearly full moon, as last night was. The light from a full moon is bright, and I know she can see better under one. I don’t always know what she sees, but whatever she thinks she sees, to her it’s something that shouldn’t be there. Usually, the something is utterly harmless and has every right to be there. Sometimes it’s an opossum and most often it’s deer, but to her it doesn’t matter. It requires enraged barking, and that wakes me up.

And then I remember that it’s another full moon, and I had the same problem last time. Full moon equals Baby Dog barking at all hours of the night. And that equals me not getting any sleep. The objects of her barking are completely oblivious to her outrage, which only makes her bark even louder. How dare those deer ignore me, she seems to say. Tonight I will have to find someplace for her to sleep where she can’t see the outdoors. It’s the only way I’ll be able to get any sleep until the moon is small again. Such is life in the woods.