Fast forward about 50 years and I am close to reenacting some of the scenes from this show. We live in a subdivision in Baton Rouge and are surrounded by houses. There are some lakes about a mile from the house and some wooded areas a few miles away. But somehow, we have more animals in our back yard than I did when I lived backed up to the woods!

In the ten years we have been here, we have caught on our cameras a wide variety of critters. We have seen squirrels, armadillos, raccoons, skunks (another story!), foxes, opossums and the usual neighborhood cat population. And for the most part, we have lived peacefully without too much aggravation (to our garden or house). And then the tide shifted in January.

While driving to work one morning, my check engine light came on in my Sequoia. It was running a little rough, so I brought it to a shop for repairs. Two thousand dollars later, I drove it home and it still was running like crap. And they mentioned “Rodent Damage.” I called bullshit and traded it in the next day on a pickup truck. Yep. I was in a bad mood.

A couple of months passed and the check engine light on my pickup came on. I brought it to the shop and they said “Rodent Damage” and sent me the pictures. Another two thousand dollars but this time was different. Christine and I knew we had a problem and we decided to go to war. Unfortunately, we did not know the opponent yet.

Because of all of the squirrels in the back yard and the internet experts saying they could be the problem, we went to war with them. The problem was that it would be frowned upon (and illegal) for me to have an open squirrel season in my back yard. So we tried some random deterrent methods that did not work at all. Even though we have only seen one mouse since we lived here, we also set out some mice and rat traps…..just in case. And then one full size rat trap disappeared! How big of a rat are we dealing with?

I set out more traps and for weeks we caught nothing. And then something started eating the tomatoes in our raised garden beds. Once again the question remained: squirrel or rat/mouse? I set up more cameras. We put traps in the garden bed. We tried everything we could and we finally caught a big rat in the garden! Well, I guess we have rats somewhere.

We quickly identified our shed in the back as the most likely hideout for our unwanted guests so I ringed it with the full size Victor rat traps. And I caught a couple so the tide was shifting in the war! And then I went out yesterday morning and three traps were gone. Completely gone! I searched the entire back yard, which is completely fenced in, and found them no where. Mason’s first guess was a R.O.U.S. from The Princess Bride.

I still haven’t ruled that out, but we checked the cameras and found the video of the two raccoons rolling out that morning. We also saw a opossum cruising through the yard that night as well. Definitely a Wild Kingdom night at my house! I still don’t know which animal carried off those traps, but I used some Redneck Engineering to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

If something can drag that metal ramp away, then I will be camping out in the back yard with a gun. I am not afraid of rodents but that would seriously be a challenge.

The post Wild Kingdom – The Battle Against Critters first appeared on I Am Timbeaux.

I have always had a hate/hate relationship with sleep. When I was a kid, my dad would walk in my room (usually around 2 to 3 AM), flip on the light and say “I’m leaving”. This usually meant he was leaving to go hunting or fishing and I had about two minutes to get dressed and beat him to the truck or I would be left behind. To this day, my brain goes from asleep to fully functioning in a nano-second. And from what I hear, I have passed that down to my kids and grandkids!

For as long as I can remember, my brain and sleep habits have not played nicely together. I went through a long stage where I would get in bed and lay there for hours trying to shut my mind off. Fortunately I have moved on to the “out cold in minutes” stage, so I think that is better. Until I wake up that is.

The time I wake up can vary from midnight to four AM depending on what triggers my consciousness. By the way, what is up with having to use the bathroom at night? Do you reach a certain age and your bladder shrinks to the size of walnut? I think it’s bullshit by the way.

So last week, I was sleeping soundly until my walnut sized bladder woke me up around 2:15 AM. I tried all my tricks. Walk to the bathroom with your eyes barely open. Don’t turn on any lights. Hope you hit somewhere near the toilet. Creep back to bed with eyes still barely cracked. Find your most comfortable sleeping position and start repeating “Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep.” as softly as you can.

If it hadn’t been for Cotton-Eye Joe
I’d been married long time ago
Where did you come from, where did you go?
Where did you come from, Cotton-Eye Joe?

WTF???? Of everything on the planet that could have entered my mind, why this song? I mean how did it get there? I have been on a 60’s & 70’s rock mix mood with some jazz thrown in for background focus, but “Cotton Eye Joe”? Why? Why? Why?

And so it begins. My brain spent the next two plus hours repeating this song as I analyzed what it could possibly be about. And here are the results. I have two distinct possibilities that evolved from my sleep deprived brain.

First, he could be like Raoul the pool boy at our last house. No, we did not have a pool boy named Raoul, but it was a joke between Christine and I. The line “I’d been married long time ago” leads me to believe that the girlfriend/fiancé got whisked away by Joe. And the singer was obviously blindsided by this Romeo showing up and stealing his woman. But that’s just one theory. And I didn’t spend much time on it.

My second theory is that “Cotton-Eye Joe” was a creepy scarecrow serial killer that lives out in the corn field. Actually it is pretty obvious. Cotton-Eye Joe? Who has cotton eyes except some creepy doll, stuffed animal or scarecrow? Where did you come from? Where did you go? He came out of the damn cornfield similar to the Children of the Corn. And he better have gone back to the cornfield because the only other option is that he is under my bed. And if I have to pee again then I have to step out of the bed and……..well you get the point.

Two plus hours of this and you wonder why I say I have a hate/hate relationship with sleep.

The post Cotton Eye Joe: A horror story first appeared on I Am Timbeaux.

Before anyone gets too excited it was not much of a “race” for me. Last November or so, I decided to start running again after a few years off. I used to love to run, so I figured I would give it another shot. I took it nice and easy getting back started knowing my body was not bombproof like it used to be. And I worked up to running a 5K in the neighborhood. Woo hoo!

And then I started thinking……do I have another marathon or ultra in me? My mind and body were built for the grind required to run longer distances. Maybe I could give it a whirl. And then I saw an ad for the Tiger 10K put on by some old friends at FreshJunkie Racing. That would be a good next step on my new journey, so I signed up for it.

And then life reached up and slapped me upside my head. Obligations, travel, exhaustion, etc. and my training went to crap. I believe I ran twice in the three weeks leading up to the race. But this was just for fun. I am just going to enjoy the scenery. It is just a stepping stone to longer distances. Blah blah blah.

There is a reason I migrated to longer and longer races as I got older. Because those races became less about the finishing time (except for cutoffs) and more about how long I could suffer and still finish. It was the only way I could force my competitiveness and memories of the speed I used to have into a dark corner of my mind. And it worked fine.

And then I went and signed up for a 10K. In my world a 10K is more of a sprint compared to the ultramarathons. 10K’s are run for time not just to finish. At least it used to be that way. So for this race, I set a soft goal of 1 hour to finish the race. With my fastest 10K time being 36 minutes, this was hard to swallow. But I am just there to enjoy the race. I wonder how many times I told myself that before the race?

Race Day arrived and I was ready to go out nice and slow. Then the race started and so did my brain. I knew every split I had to hit to beat an hour. The one hour mark had changed from a soft goal to a pass-fail mark. And that is what my mind thought. Any time over an hour for me would have been a complete failure. But you are here to smell the roses! No time for that. Keep pushing. And I did.

When I crossed the finish line in 57:42 I was happy I was done. And that was it. Christine asked if it made me want to start racing again. Nope. It cemented the fact that I would never be able to just enjoy running a race. I got screamed at “Pick It Up” too many times in my life to be able to enjoy or coast at any time during a race. So my racing is done.

But I did go for a 3.5 mile run/walk today. I ran when I wanted to. Walked when I wanted to. And thoroughly enjoyed the 90 degree weather. My racing may be done but I will still love being outside on the road or a trail.

You may wonder why I decided to start this blog again. Last Christmas my daughter, Lara, gave me a year of Storyworth. This is a site that asks me a question each week and I write a story related to the question. It has rekindled my enjoyment of writing random crap that happens in my life. So during my run/walk today, I decided it was time to crank it back up.

So welcome back. I am Timbeaux.

The post Tiger 10K Race Report: Why? first appeared on I Am Timbeaux.