Watch where you leave your trap

A couple days ago, while pulling tarps over the t-house roofs in the rain, my cell phone managed to get wet. It's one of those flip stylies with two L.E.D. screens. An hour later when I look at the phone to check the time, I see that it seemed to have been damaged by the water. It was tough to read and the time had frozen. Every thing still functioned normally except for the screen. I turn it off to hopefully reset, turn it on and... now it is completely blank. It still works but sadly, I do not have my 126 stored phone numbers memorized. Ughh! Make some phone calls... Sprint will charge me 50 bucks to fix it. Check sched, hmm, I won't be able to take care of it till Monday... nearest store is 40 minutes one way and this current retreat goes thru Sunday. Oh well, I will get by.

last night, while plugging the phone in to charge it, I dropped it. I think jokingly to myself: "Maybe that will fix it." I look on the small screen on the outside of the flip and sure enough, it is working... cool! It says "CHARGING" where before it said " ". I flip it open, everything is intact, time is correct, address book is there. All I can think is that they must be fixing these things with rubber mallets or something... what an easy way to make 50 bucks.

Since yesterday and thru Sunday, we have a full frigging house. I am wearing several hats at once. Making fires, watching kids, turning on lights, finding sheets and blankets. Writing it all down does not seem like much so in order to get the gist of this precipice that I walk every moment on this job, I will let you know that first of all there are over 40 adults here. Normally we have below 30. On top of that there are 6 children. 2 are less than a year old. 1 is a three year old. 2 four year olds and one six year old. On top of all this, I am house/cat sitting up in the canyon: 3 cats. At least there is a natural hot spring waiting for me. Oh yeah, I also had to orient the chefs to kichen protocal as they have never been here before. They are super cool Hare Krishinas. Their food is dialed and one of them is pretty cute.

The incident that really shook my leaves and stirred my roots today was the discovery of a raccoon locked in a have a heart trap. This one dude, Steve think, a guest here this weekend, alerted me to the poor creatures predicament. At the time, I was keeping an eye on Willie, so I had him come on down to witness the release.

When I get there, George is driving by in his vintage golden Ford pick up that must be form the forties or something, I flag him down for info and support. Anger climbs into the driver's seat of my brain but I keep it under control, well relative control. My mind runs around in circles trying to understand how some body could trap this coon and just leave it in there with no food or water for at least a day and a half. Adding to my frustration was the difficulty in getting the cage open, letting the raccoon free and not getting injured in the proccess. Maybe 10 minutes later, I direct George on what bars need bending. He succeeds in the mini super task of bending the steel bars which keep the gate from opening the way we need it to. Next, we find a 12 foot long 1x1 which I use to leverage the gate open. It take the raccoon almost a minute to realize he can leave the cage. His fur is wet and his bandit eyes dull from his experience of being trapped for maybe 48 hours. He was still wet from the storm we had on Tuesday night to Wednesday. He slowly made his way over to a tree and began to climb it. My blood only began to stop boiling after over an hour of yoga. That is when it occurred to me that no one had purposely caught the coon. The cage had been carelessly left there and the hapless raccoon had walked into it for a stay he will probably never forget.