Memories of my mother ... (part three) ...

My goodness, but it's been a long time since I published part two! Four months and three days, to be exact, but just in the past couple of days I have read other bloggers' posts that triggered more memories, so I thought I'd share them with you today.



Bats in Grandma's cabin ...


Dad's mom had a cottage on Woman Lake (Wisconsin) that he and his sister frequented during the summers with their respective families. And yes, it's the very same as the one mentioned here.

This one year we must have been the first family group there, and were busily bringing things in from the car while Mom was sweeping out the cabin and airing out the place. On one of our unloading trips in, Mom urged us to get into the bedroom and close the door -- "Quickly!" she said. (We could see that she was furiously chasing 'something' around the main room with a broom and was in no mood for an argument.)

When, just a few minutes later, she opened the door and told us that it was all right to come out, we could see one of God's more hideous creatures (Sorry, God, but that's my personal opinion.) -- a bat -- lying 'smooshed deader than a doornail' on the floor. Mother had triumphed again!



Berry-picking ...


We were berry-picking. Raspberries, I think, but it could have been chokecherries, blackberries, whatEVer -- and oh, were they prolific! We all had our buckets, and it wouldn't be very long before they were completely full and then we would return home, where Mother would proceed to can/bake/preserve ... you know, all of those good things that I never learned how to do because I 'wasn't interested'. (What an absolute idiot I was!)

We weren't all together in one tightly-knit group. Rather, we had each ventured out on our own to glean what was just a FAbulous crop of wild berries!

I could hear some snorting and snuffling sounds nearby, and was a little curious as to their origins. SO, I peeked around my latest procurement bush of choice, and guess what I saw?

Contrary to my post of March 9th, the first one on canoeing, where I said, "It was on this portage that I had my first live, face-to-face, experience with a bear.", it was on THIS berry-picking episode that I actually had that first encounter. I had simply forgotten about it.

So what happened? Well, I found Mom, and we all exited the bear's grazing ground safely.


In retrospect, the 'snuffling sounds' were probably those of the bear 'inhaling' the very abundant berries, and the 'snorting sounds'? Indicative of extreme appreciation, I would say, not unlike that of a belch.


Many thanks, Ellen and Steven, for jogging some more of my memory banks!