Comparative Adventuring

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."

—Helen Keller
***
"forgot coffee at home. acquired some of the swill we serve here. set it on my desk, knocked it off with my elbow. all over floor and clothes. swore. opened cabinet to grab paper towels, cabinet door came off the hinge. hunkered over to sop up coffee, came up and hit my head on underside of desk."

—Me, on a work day, October 2011

***

It's become obvious that we have a problem with one of our neighbors.

In the past few weeks he's broken through one of our perimeter gates multiple times, and subsequently broken into our chicken yard an equal number of times.

At first we asked him, in a neighborly way, not to do these things, by quietly reinforcing the gate. In response, the breaking and entering escalated to a daily occurrence—at which time we decided to stop putting up with his bullshit, and called his owner.

Yeah, the bad neighbor is a bull—his name is Bambi, and he's a big jerk. He repeatedly put our chickens in danger of being crushed, and us in danger of being disfigured herding him out of the chicken yard and through the irrelevant outer gate.

In addition, we figure he owes us a new 6-foot gate and a new 30-foot section of chicken-yard fencing.

Fortunately his owner is *not* a jerk—he's been apologetic about Bambi's anti-social antics, and has offered to pay for repairs.

***

In this very same timeframe it became obvious that we had a parallel problem with a different neighbor.

This one decided it would be great fun to harass our sheep.

It started with frantic yelling at them, then quickly escalated to crawling under our fence and chasing them from one end of their paddock to the other.

Tired of our sheep being terrorized and traumatized, we once again took matters into our own hands. The neighbor in question is now tied to a post on our front deck.

Yeah, he's a Border Collie named Patchi, staying with us while his owner is on a photo assignment in Tahiti.

We *hate* restraining Patchi like this, but his herding instinct overwhelms his good manners. He literally can't be trusted off the leash for ten seconds. 

So, he'll be herding chew toys on the deck for another 48 hours.

***

Our work days have changed significantly since that October day in 2011. Our office is now a small farm, and the coffee is always good.

Sure, sometimes the work environment is physically hostile—but now we can actually take immediate and definitive steps to remedy the problem. It's quite liberating.

I'll take that seven days a week, 10/10, no notes.