Lost on Chigger Ridge

Few things deflate the male ego like getting lost.  Worse, is getting lost with your wife in the passenger's seat.  Worst, is being lost with your wife AFTER you've declined to take her advice.

A couple of months ago, I was doing a story for Horse Talk Magazine.  Part of my research involved visiting a local university's equestrian facility only about 30 miles from home.  I looked up the address, found it on the map and then printed the turn-by-turn directions from MapGuess, er, I mean MapQuest.

As I turned onto a county road just a few miles from the facility, my navigator-in-chief asked if I knew where I was going.  "I got this," I replied with haughty assurance when she offered an alternative route.  I explained that I'd MapGuessed, er, I mean MapQuested the shortest route.  "Relax," I added.  I'm a former paramedic/firefighter.  I can read a map.  Duh.

Her eyebrows went up and she turned away to look out her window while giving me the old you're-full-of-crap-but-I-can't-tell-you-squat, "oooooo-kay."

If you've ever seen the movie Deliverance you probably remember the theme song, Dueling Banjos.  It was right about now that I began to hear some twanging in the background of my brain.  My confidence was shaky and I was on a country road in rural North Carolina.  Que the first banjo.

My last MapGuess-mandated turn before arriving right outside the equestrian facility was onto a quaint country road named Chigger Ridge.  "Quaint country road" is country-speak for not paved.  Halifax County has several legitimate roads, replete with route numbers, mail delivery and everything, yet are only gravel on dirt, so I wasn't overtly alarmed when we hit Chigger Ridge.  However, I did hear the second banjo begin its rift.

We passed several nice farm houses and then entered a stretch of woods.  The gravel got thinner, the potholes bigger and the trees on either side of the narrowing road were plastered with NO TRESPASSING signs.  When we passed a section of "road" that was all but washed out in the last rainstorm I heard two things: my wife snickering and both banjos going full-bore.

A hundred yards later deep in the forest, the dirt path abruptly ended and we found ourselves staring at a big, homemade sign.  I can't remember the exact wording, but the message essentially was: No, this road does NOT go through like it shows on the map. Turn around and leave quickly before you become the next project for my brother-in-law Billy-Bob, the taxidermist.

I did a 12-point turn, squealed like a pig and skee-dattled.  My wife chuckled as her eyes burned "I told you so!" into my temple like lasers.  In all fairness, I wasn't really lost.  I knew exactly where I was and exactly where I wanted to go.  I just couldn't get there from here.

When I turned off Chigger Ridge and headed back to the main road, Leslie provided me with the directions she'd looked up on Rand McNally.  Of course, they were perfect.

I drove on and did my research, despite singed temples, a banjo headache and deflated ego. 

I hate MapQuest.  May the chiggers of a thousand hillbillies infest their corporate headquarters.

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Take a Skunk to Work Day

My wife is always looking for new ways to bond with nature.  Like on Tuesday, when she founded the Take a Skunk to Work Day.

It's not unlike my wife to drag a critter into the car.  My youngest son recalls the time she rescued a six-foot blacksnake from the boots of some local Bubbas, climbed in the car and drove to a safe release area, all while talking on her cell phone.

She once tried to hold a baby goat in her lap for a 60-mile drive, but I put the kibosh on her caprine carry.  Not in the cab of my truck.

But Tuesday's wild ride was inadvertent.  She left home for work around 0515, and soon was assaulted by the smell of skunk.  Not the fleeting just-passed-a-dead-skunk-type of smell, but a full-potency, burlap-bag-full-of-skunks-in-the-backseat kind of smell.  She said she thought she was going to pass out.

I asked her if she could have run over a big skunk.  She replied that she knows she didn't because they make a distinctive "bump-bump" when you run over them.  In a moment of insanity, I commented that if there was anyone who could accurately describe the sensation of running over an animal, it was her.  I have a black-and-blue mark to remind me to keep my mouth shut.

Several times during her 50-mile commute the smell returned, leading her to conclude that the skunk was somewhere under the hood.  When she got out of the car at Duke, she could still smell the skunk.  She worried that she had absorbed the stench.  Skunk is not how nurses like to smell.

This morning, I walked past her car and it still smelled skunky.  I looked under the hood and noticed a cozy space between the grille and radiator where a skunk would love to hide.  It smelled pretty pungent, but there were no signs of a critter.

We have no way to prove Leslie gave a skunk a ride to work, but the evidence supports the theory.  And I get somewhat perverse pleasure knowing that one of our pesky residents found himself in downtown Durham.

Checking under your hood for critters is definitely a sign of countrification, but we officially became 100-percent, certified country folk for another reason: we now have a permanently disabled car sitting on our property.  Yeeeee ha!  Skin that 'possum, fetch my corn cob pipe and pass the jug.

My oldest son kills cars like there's a bounty on them, so I took a car-dolly to Norfolk to retrieve his latest carcass.  Aside from the dehydrated engine, there are a lot of good parts on the Toyota, so I want to sell them or use them for Jordan's Toyota. 

Nothing irks my wife more than a junk car sitting off the driveway, but she relented because there are hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of good parts on the car.  If only one of them could replace my brain.  This morning I went up to Leslie, gave her a big kiss, reminded her of the junker and congratulated her for finally crossing the threshold into pure country living.  Now I have TWO black-and-blue marks.  Owwww!

For those of you wondering what happened to the bees, well, they left.  Our bee man, Ned Strange, said they probably had their new digs picked out before they left their last hive.  Still, it's a shame.  There's a huge demand for wild bees because man-managed bee colonies all over the country are dying.

These bees stayed in our tree for about two days, ate all the honey in the empty hive and then departed without so much as a thank you.  I have relatives like that.

The good news is that our stingophobic oldest son will now visit.  The bad news is that I can't raise my arms to give him a hug.

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