Moving to the farm as been an adventure. We are only 5 short miles from the city of Kingston. Yet, at times it seems like we are a million miles away. We have seen things here that I have never seen before. Most of them, things I didn’t want to see. Like the 9 foot black snake in the driveway. Or its smaller sibling in the basement, slinking along the wall. We had mutant crickets in the house that were so big that they actually clogged the shop vac. There were bats clinging to the underside of the shutters, and dozens of mice in one of the barns…Dozens! We have also seen some of mother natures the most amazing sights. Like the bald eagle that hunts from a tree top early in the morning in the back field. Or the turkey family that strolls down the driveway at dusk. They are the biggest birds I have ever seen. They flew down into the yard one morning and it looked like a small plane was crash landing.  Last week, after we got a dusting of snow I walked up the hill toward the barns early in the morning and I noticed a set of foot prints in the snow. It was a single set of foot prints…. a very LARGE set of prints. They were too small to be a bear, yet too big to be a dog…and I could see the claws. My feeling was that they belonged to some sort of large cat. I knew that a mountain lion has been spotted in Hurley, just a few miles away. So when I told Egidio about them, he contacted his friend Billy, who had set up several game cams around the property. And apparently we have moved into Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I am told that we have every bird species known to exist in the northeast, along with black bears, fisher cats and coyotes. LOTS of coyotes.

Egidio and Billy told me..”The animals are more afraid of you, than you are of them” Well, That can’t possibly be accurate. The animals just don’t KNOW how afraid I am! Trust me…I am more afraid of them!! And let’s be honest… its not like there are no animals in Kingston to be afraid of. There are LOTS of animals…the two legged kind. And with those animals I stand a reasonable chance of out running them. I have zero chance of out running a bear or a coyote! “They won’t come down here by the house” they said… wrong again! This morning I went outside around 6:45 am to put a few things in the car, and I heard an owl. It sounded really close so I walked a few yards up the driveway and stopped to look for it. I quickly forgot all about that owl, when out of the corner of my eye I saw quick movement…. and I mean QUICK!! About 30 feet away from me, up on a hill, 3 coyotes darted past me. They were fast and silent. Thank God they continued to run. As I stood there feeling my heart race inside my chest… waiting for the adrenalin to settle, all I could think was “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore”.