As the ringleader had climbed down, Arthur watched two other adults and four smaller coons waltz right in and have a feast. That was how the coon war started for Arthur, and it would last full bore for the next five years.
The first thing he’d done was put a deadbolt on the door and then bought traps. There were casualties on both sides. Arthur lost chickens and cats, but the coons were losing numbers. Over five years, Arthur had trapped, stalked, ambushed, and hunted thirty-four raccoons in the war.
Last year a ninja coon showed up, but a veteran now, Arthur had dispatched him with only losing one cat and one chicken. The cats around the barn weren’t really pets. Arthur let them live there as long as he didn’t have mice. Not only did the cats help keep the mice down, but they did a fair job on the squirrels, gophers and wild rabbits. Only able to guess, Arthur thought about a dozen or so cats lived on the property.
The only cats he claimed were the two Persian cats that lived in the house; Mickey and Minnie. They were inside cats and as far as Arthur was concerned lazy as hell and got hair everywhere, but Wendy loved them so he kept his mouth shut. If he fed an animal, that animal better show him respect. That’s why Arthur didn’t like cats.
Lifting the plow up, Arthur turned the tractor around and started another set of rows. Glancing over, he saw Wendy driving her four-wheeler down the rows he had already made, planting seeds. It’d only taken him four years to convince her to use the four-wheeler, instead of planting the rows by hand.
Walking ten acres back and forth to him was wasteful, but Wendy had put up a fight until the first time Arthur had let Joseph use a four-wheeler to plant. After she’d watched how fast their son had planted, her four-wheeler had better be set up for planting or she would let him know about it.
When he was done, Arthur pulled the tractor out and turned it off. He climbed out and checked the sprinkler system as Wendy finished. Hearing the four-wheeler turn off, Arthur turned around and saw Wendy walking over to him. “Don’t say it,” she said, holding up a gloved hand.
“I would never say that you were hardheaded about using technology,” Arthur gasped in fake shock.
Chuckling, Wendy turned to look at the neat rows. “We should’ve planted two weeks ago,” she sighed.
Standing up, “We only have one shift a month as nurses and someone volunteered us to help build the new fellowship hall at church,” Arthur chided.
Punching Arthur lightly in his arm, “You said it was okay,” Wendy popped off.
Laughing, Arthur put his arm around her and turned to the north. The house he had built was sitting a hundred feet over the valley below. The hundred acres below them were all fields, divided into twenty acre sections so they could alternate the cows, horses, and sheep. Their property stopped at Pine Creek, but Arthur thought it should’ve been called Little Pine River.
The creek on the east side of the property that he used for hydropower was a creek. There was another creek to the west, plus three ponds. Only the valley floor they owned was fields, the rest of the land was covered in trees and most were hardwood. They had orchards of mulberry and peach trees. But Arthur loved his oak and pecan trees.
At the very back edge of the field below the steep rise was a massive red barn, then further to the east was the original two bedroom house. Looking at the small house, Arthur was proud of how far they had come with all the work. “Ready to go work in the greenhouse?” he asked.
“I get stung by a bee today, I won’t be happy,” Wendy sighed. “I like working in the greenhouse when they are in the hive.”
Shrugging, “We can go swimming and do the greenhouse this evening,” Arthur offered.
Looking behind her, Wendy saw the eight-hundred-square-foot building that housed their gym beside the pool. On the outside, Arthur had put a shower and people could use the bathroom in the gym without tracking water into the house. “Okay,” Wendy said, heading for the swimming pool.
“Skinny dipping only!” Arthur sang out, running past her for the swimming pool.
“Then we aren’t getting in the hot tub because you’ll fall asleep,” Wendy shouted, breaking into a run. Their closest neighbor was over half a mile away up the valley. Within five miles of the house, there were only six other houses and all of them were up the valley. Their land sat at the end of the valley, so they had isolation.
In fact, they had to drive twenty miles just to reach a small gas station. Clarksville was just over twenty-eight miles away, but they had to drive almost fifty miles to get there. As Arthur liked to point out, they lived at the ass end of nowhere and that was fine with them.
Both stripped as they ran and were soon joined by the dogs. “If your dogs take off running with my bra again, they get shot,” Wendy shouted as Arthur skidded to a stop and pulled off his cowboy boots.
“They haven’t done that since they were puppies,” Arthur snapped, dropping his boot.
Watching Arthur dive in, Wendy put her right boot at the back of her left and pulled her left foot out as she started unbuckling her jeans. “One day, someone is going to drive up here while we are acting like teenagers,” she laughed as Arthur tread water.
“My dogs know how to attack because the gate up
