Man vs. nature in the Champlain Valley

The last couple of years, my wife Susan, my son Nicholas and I have been renovating an old brick farmhouse in the Champlain Valley.

It’s been great fun, but in the way of such things we’ve learned to accept the setbacks and complications with the victories.

Broken water lines, bat and mouse (and lady bug and spider) infestations, floods in the basement, poison ivy outbreaks, ticks, leaking roof, dog tangled in fence, furnace failure…

Nothing teaches stoicism like a nearly century-old house — especially one surrounded and often invaded by wildlife.

So the other morning, before dawn, I went into my son Nicholas’s room and saw a creature lying on the rug.

It was nearly pitch dark and the animal — which seemed to be about the size of a large weasel — wasn’t moving.

Great, I thought. What the heck is this thing? And how did it get in here?

I approached stealthily and as my eyes adapted to the dark I saw the clear outline of white teeth.

This looked worse than ladybugs.

I thought of the helicopters which had been dropping rabies pellets up and down the valley the last couple of weeks.

I thought of my boy sleeping in the bed a few feet away.

I took another step and the creature didn’t move. Must be dead, right? Or waiting to pounce.

Another step and I made out the thing’s scaly hide: a lizard, a big one. In the Adirondacks? We have black snakes galore around our garden — but iguanas?

Another step — imagine me in full Marlin Perkins mode, man vs. nature — and I realized that I was stalking Nicholas’s toy tyrannosaurus rex.

It grinned up at me with its big plastic jaws.

Did I feel sheepish? A little.

But my honest reaction was relief. In my book, discovering that we don’t have a t-rex infestation is reason to celebrate.

Tags: champlain valley