UNDER THE HIGH DESERT MOON

And I thought I was going to sleep... Ha, ha, the jokes on me.

First, about an hour ago I realized I hadn’t locked the gate yet, which is particularly important tonight because small town news is that riff-raff are on the prowl, spurred by a little meth and Vlad of Madrid.

So, I walked out the 100 yards or so to the gate with flip flops, a broom and a high powered work light, wary of the rattlers and all the other nocturnal beasts we learned about from our neighbors at dinner tonight.

They’ll soon will be celebrating their 40th year here, and kindly warned of us of the scorpions and the porcupine and the stinging centipede, “which you just can’t kill by stomping on them, because their exoskeleton is so hard...So, you’ve just got to sever them in half or catch them and let them loose.”

Anyway, there was that.

And then, at a little-too-far past midnight New-York-time, I remembered our neighbors’ parting advice, “You better cover those new plants tonight, otherwise you’re simply providing the rabbits their next meal.”

Ugh.

So, I went out to the shed, freshly-showered and in my jammies, knocking on the door to give a heads up to the pack rats that were likely in there, and got me some rolls of metal screen.

And by the way, they also reminded me to leave the hoods of our cars up tonight. Otherwise, the rodents will chew on the tasty warm wires and you’ll be paying hundreds, if not thousands, in repairs. Other neighbors on Horny Toad Road told us much the same when we had dinner at their house one cold winter-into-spring night in late March.

Anyway, it took an exhausting 15 minutes or so to unroll and tuck-under and weigh down with whatever-rocks I could find in the area where we had just spent hours clearing them.

And I thought ranch work required wee-early mornings; wasn’t expecting to be tending to the garden in the middle of the night.

Goodnight and good riddance to the vermin creeping under the high desert moon.