I had just purchased a herd of large sheep and had yet to train them to my electric fence system. It was a rainy day, one had gotten loose and I had not put a collar on it yet. With my grain bucket shaking, I was able to convince it to come close. I quickly wrapped my arms around its neck. Ha! Gotcha! Immediately, the ewe wanted to escape and for a brief moment I held it in place. The clarke shoes I was wearing, however, had barely any tread. The combination of wet grass, 180 pound ewe determination to escape and a 150 lb man's determination to not let go, led to a 100 yard grass water ski in one direction and 100 yard grass water ski back all along the electric fence. It was an adrenaline rush which ended with me soaking wet and rolling in laughter along my family who all got to witness the comedic event.

Sweeping my open hand across a table and closing it on a fly as it leaps upward, sometimes catching two. Cafes here are inundated with them at certain seasons.

Raccoons on the Rampage, August 1986

"Raccoons on the Rampage" the sign said at the trail head. We laughed. With my mother, my husband Terry and I backpacked two miles to the Pacific Ocean, camping in tents.

In the middle of the night, Terry and I were awakened by the shrill screams of animals fighting and scrabbling. Poked our heads out of the tent.

Raccoons were perched on our suspended food bag, tearing it apart. On the ground, raccoons fought over food. More raccoons were lined up on the branch and rope.

We hastily pulled on our hiking boots. Wearing T-shirts and underpants, Terry and I ran to the beach, collecting baseball-sized rocks. While Terry threw rocks at the raccoons - he was a Little League pitcher- I ran back-and-forth collecting ammunition.

BAM! “GOT HIM!" my mother heard in her tent. "Aww, the kids are playing with the raccoons," she thought sleepily.

The raccoons destroyed our food. Defeated, we cleaned up the mess and hiked out for breakfast.

In my early 20's I lived in a house with several other young adult males. All our money was spent on women, drugs, alcohol, and occassionally food and rent. We never seemed to be able to pay garbage collection fees though, so we would just make a Saturday dump run when there was enough garbage bags to fill one of the trucks (of course we all had trucks - you can't be designated driver for a group if you can only cart around 2 other people uncomfortably).

So of course we'd get mice.

Well one of them had the audacity to come into the house and be seen! Being young males and having not killed anything in awhile, the hunt was on. We divided up the fireplace implements as suitable weapons and started moving furniture - couches, chairs, the entertainment center - anything it went under during the chase.

After having moved everything in the living room, kitchen, and dining room 2 or 3 times (and successfully keeping it from escaping down the hall to the bedrooms) we had it trapped underneath an overturned sofa. A quick meeting of the minds ensued where we formulated our attack/defense strategy/resource deployent - followed by a quick bong hit - and we were ready.

I flipped the sofa and stamped my feet, driving it towards my roommate Wayne. He had the fireplace poker at the ready, swung mightily and missed the mouse but nailed the carpet. The hole in the carpet was probably less damage than splattered mouse guts and blood, so probably good he missed. The mouse, in avoiding the poker, jumped towards my other roomate Mike (a semi pro wrestler) armed with the fireplace shovel. His swing didn't miss and he hit a good solid triple.

As satisfying as that was I started paying for garbage service the next week.