Took a frantic call from Joe yesterday telling me my camp had been tore up. He didn't stick around to see if it was wind, people or vermin. He had gone up there to cut firewood and found my tipi on the ground and equipment and gear scattered about.
So, Joe picked me up in his jeep yesterday late afternoon and dropped me off at my camp and I began the laborious and lamentable task of putting my tipi back up which wasn't easy because the poles and the tripod they were attached to were all discombobulated with the tarp skin have on half off.
I had to take it all apart and start from scratch cussing like a drunken sailor the whole time I was working on it. It's doubly difficult because I'm trying to set it up on uneven ground. I swear there's not an inch of flat ground within 6 miles of my camp.
Gathered up miscellaneously scattered stuff like my camp coffee pot and fry pans and such. Holes were ripped in my beautiful pink quilt. Believe those 4 dogs that wanted to feed on me the other day are the culprits behind this cowardly terrorist act.
They surrounded me last week while I was gathering logs for the cabin walls. Their gang consisted of a rottweiler, a pit bull, a rottweiler mix and a dalmation.
While I was dragging logs they suddenly appeared out of a piney grove and began to advance upon me entering the clearing in the glade where my half constructed cabin sits, them snarling with their lips curled, eyes blazing red and barking while simultaneously growling. I was struck with the horrible thought that they must have the hydrophoby.
I immediately dropped what I was doing and began to mount a vigorous defense using the 2 walls of the cabin as a fort. But, the rott mix and the dalmation started flanking me on the right and the left respectively with the pit bull and rott mix sneaking up from behind stealthily like.
After about an hour or so of their devious maneuvering and war like behavior I had had enough and summoned the Cavalry.
The Sheriff's dispatcher said he could hear the dogs in the background and told me not to hang up. Advised him that I needed both my hands to swing my axe at them. He said for me to rest the phone on a log or something but not to hang up.
He also advised that I was on my own for at least a half hour as the Deputy was on the other side of the County. "Damn, you guys are never close around when I need ya!" I says as I gripped the axe in my right hand ready to take a swipe at the alpha male rottweiler who was steadily closing in while holding the phone up to my ear with my left.
The beasts started growling more menacingly and kept creeping closer and closer. As I was talking to the dispatcher these nasty brutes behaved ever more aggressive... as if they knew I was conspiring against them by calling in the big guns of Clear Creek County.
Told my new found buddy, the dispatcher, that I now knew how claustrophobic Custer and his men must have felt with the Sioux closing in on all sides. "Yeah." he says.
Some 40 minutes later he advised that the Deputy had finally arrived and had pulled over on York Gulch Rd maybe 300 yards west of my position. Apparently, the Deputy could hear all the fuss the dogs were making and was trying to find me. Told him I would shout for him.
Finally, the Deputy came scrambling up the canyon wall out of the deep dark trees to my right and entering the clearing he was huffing and puffing, his breathing clearly tortuous, his face ruddy, him bent over trying to recover from his arduous scramble.
This large, fleshy Deputy found me defending my fort as if it were the Alamo.
He hobbled over clumsily to me to ascertain whether I had been injured in the ensuing melee. Once he discovered I was okay he says "Okay let's charge em." I said, Charge em? Just shoot the damned things! " That won't be necessary." The Deputy says. " Oh, really? I responded.
"Well then give me a gun just in case your brilliant idea of charging them doesn't exactly pan out." I says. He chuckled and said, "Yeah, right, your a funny man I can see that." All the while he was smiling at me like I was some toddler wanting to play cops and robbers. "I can handle a gun." I says. "County policy, sir, sorry."
On the count of 3 we charged the brutes with both of us yelling, hooping and hollering with me screaming the old rebel yell trying to mimic Pickett's charge at Gettysburg.
The dogs...seeing this horrific onslaught of human power and manhood coming at em turned tail and scattered each to the four winds. Well, I gotta hand it to the Deputy. He was right. The charge worked.
The Deputy and I must have run 75 yards or more through the brush and trees before I realized that we had somehow separated in all the confusion and now I was all alone.
I stopped to regain my bearings and stood still but turned my head in all directions to see if I could see or hear the Deputy or the dogs. An eery quietness suddenly fell over the forest.
Oops! I says. Now what? Where's the Deputy? More importantly, where's those damned doggie demons?
I decided to find my way back to camp where I found the Deputy pacing back and forth talking on his radio.
" You better come down with me. I can't guarantee your safety until we find the dogs' owners and have a little conversation with em." Told the Deputy that safety cannot be guaranteed anyway and that I needed to get back to work. After our heroic display of bravado I told the Deputy those canine troglodytes probably had had enough. The Deputy told me I was going back to Joe's house or Idaho Springs. One or the other. And that was that! "OK", I says, now realizing he was probably right. And, anyway, I was bone tired. So, we started down the Canyon to his prowler parked down on the side of York Gulch Rd engine still running.
Afterwards, the Deputy was going to do some checking around to find the owners so he can ticket them as they were in violation of the County leash law. The Deputy drove off and I hiked back to Joe's house.
I couldn't get the camp cleaned up yesterday and the tipi back up before dark so I'll just have to wait until next week. But, because of the constant hassles trying to get a winter cabin built I'm seriously considering scrapping the whole damned project. This has become so much more time consuming and dangerous than I had anticipated. What's more, it's taking precious time away from writing my book.
I'm going to make a decision next week. But, I'm leaning towards forgetting the whole thing.
After drowning my sorrows in several cups of newly roasted Costa Rican coffee at the Frothy Cup, Glenda, came over and asked me what was wrong. After I told her the whole story about the dogs and all the resistance I was experiencing trying to get this damned cabin up she asked me what the Universe was trying to tell me. Well, isn't that always the question? Since when do I listen to the Universe? Or anyone else for that matter?
BR Schoenbein
December 12, 2015- Saturday
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