Dear World: I Am Trying to Figure Out What to Do With This Dead Racoon
3/24/2024
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hi, i'm ash!
Creator of the New Travel & Design Series, 'OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES.'
Travel writer & host, cultural explorer, and architecture & interiors freak.
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Every week, we're exploring global culture through the lens of the home. From floorplans to fixtures, we examine how houses are built, designed, and decorated around the world (with a side of sass, of course!)
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The only podcast where we pass on the pyramids and poke around in the plumbing. Iβm Ash, and I'm, exploring the strange, smart, and wonderful ways houses are built, designed, and decorated around the world.
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A new series of OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES books designed to help you try on a new life in different places around the worldβby getting to "go behind closed doors" inside local homes to discover what it's really like to live there.
Of all the things you have written about over the years, this is my favorite timeline.
You know what’s hilarious about this, is that it was the stream of consciousness I jotted down in my iPhone notes this past week!
“This is what I mean when I say that being in rural America is like traveling to a foreign country: youβve got to re-learn how to do EVERYTHING.”
We lived in NYC then moved to Montana, then back to NYC. The above comment is so very true. (To be fair, in both directions – who puts coffee in a bag?)
NO, STOP, PLEASE WRITE A COLUMN ABOUT *THAT!* (Though I really, really dig your Oxford Comma concept, being stuck in the middle.)
Still laughing! Great articleβ¦I so understand your writings! I used to live in Bristol, Wisconsin. The town with lots of houses, then we moved to a more rural area of Bristol and omg night and dayβ¦ha ha ha ha ha! Thank you for making me laugh! Thatβs why I subscribed to your work!!!
When did you live in Bristol, Marge? Did you go to Central High School, before it became Westosha Central? Was the brass ball still at Brass Ball Corners?
Awwwβ¦I my husband passed away in 2017, I was married for 27 yrs so yes the Brass Ball restaurant was the best and the high school was not Westosha like it is now, where my 2 grandsons goβ¦how cool is !
Gotta ask – what year did you graduate? (Iβm 1968).
Like day and night, indeed! When I grew up here, I also lived in town. So this is an entirely different experience altogether. π€£ Thanks for being here, Marg!
Oh my gosh. If only these things weren’t true.
Post resonated! ‘Anything will burn if you get it hot enough’ was a phrase heard in my youth. My grandfather and great grandfather dug a deep hole and buried everything that wouldn’t burn on the farm. Savages.
My dad was a volunteer firefighter in our community and wore a pager in the 80’s. Burn bans are still a big deal. Its common in my area that you need to physically be out there to watch your burn so it doesn’t move. If someone was spotted doing a open burn with a bit of wind and black smoke you may get a call asking if you were a dumbass or in trouble.
Foxes, coyotes, even raccoons will go after chickens – way to be a cool neighbor!
They dug a hole and buried all the other things?!?!? I SALUTE THEM. When I toppled the old barn, they were concerned about a tiny bit of tin roofing that was still on there, being left in the ground.
I’m reading Damon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver right now and it sounds just about like what you’re describing. Hey, I are you in Appalachian territory? I didnt realize it runs through 6 or 7 states in the south and all the way up through eastern part of the USA. It is bigger than I thought. or maybe you’re in Ozarks territory 400 miles to the north?
Yes, that’s correct! In the Pennsylvania section of the Appalachian mountains. Going to have to look up this book!
Wow. Just purchased. That looks *incredible*. Thank you for mentioning this, Zoe!
She is such a good writer! You are going to love it.
HE HAS SAID IT TO ME THREE TIMES NOW! π€― π€£
Also, when I first moved in, I wondered what the picker upper stick thing was for in the garage. Now I understand it’s for picking up dead mice and/or mouse traps. Ha.
Turn your cottage into a spring house/above ground water cooled wine bar. I don’t know about the rest of the county or even the interstate adventurers that take a left instead of a right at the of ramp..but the Crones of the Endless Mts will book it once a month. We could also show you how to cook that dead little carnivora. It will taste like chicken.
I grew up in the deep forest of upper Michigan, like as far north as you can get, right on Lake Superior. My dad had a burn pit, which was also where he made maple syrup in the spring, but the rest of the year he’d burn things. Mostly junk mail, the big Sears catalogs, magazines, used paper towels. After I moved away and discovered most of those things are recyclable and burning them probably isn’t great for the environment, I started to think it was weird. Even if there were a burn ban he’d take his “bag of burnables” up there. The thing with people who burn things is that they think they can handle it, that the burn ban is for idiots, and my dad wasn’t an idiot.
TOTALLY. Can 100% relate.
Thanks again for making me laugh but also to know I’m not alone in the rural life lol. Burning things up is a common thing in Alaska, as are the burn bans considering we live in heavily forested state. Car thieves love to steal the car, then leave it on the side of a road on fire. The thing that makes me crazy is the amount of people who dig giant holes to put everything including cars in so when you go to dig a fence post hole, or foundation, you find these so called treasures. Sometimes your unlucky and it rains for 30 days and they wash up. What is really insane is people who have buried cars and buses to use as their septic holding tank!! Around here people leave their trash and junk all over the yard so that their property taxes stay low. I’m a little OCD (ok family says a lot OCD) and I cannot stand shit laying everywhere. I’ve got horses and dogs, I want everything safe, put away and I don’t want to trip on it when trudging thru 4 feet of snow to the barn. I have a weird relationship with animals so I”d have buried the poor raccoon in the yard if the ground wasn’t frozen and come just short of giving it a service lol. You’re bunker neighbor sounds like a hoot and like just about every other neighbor around me. Good job with the replies, will keep him guessing about you as well!