Another outhouse musing ~ November 19, 1992

David Heiller

I’ve been sitting on an outhouse column, so to speak, for several months. That’s because I had seen a want ad in a local paper back then that read: FOR SALE: Outhouse. $150.00.

I figured that anyone who is selling his out house must have a story to tell the Askov American.

First some background: We have an outhouse at our place. I guess it’s MY outhouse, since I’m the only one who uses it. Cindy hasn’t used it much since last summer, when a garter snake dropped on her.

A David-style panorama of our homestead in
Sturgeon Lake. (Complete with tape to hold it together) The outhouse is the little white building to the right.
We used it exclusively for ten years.
At the time of this column, it was David's domain.
 Eventually, even he stopped using it when it was cold.

Occasionally Mollie will hitch a ride on my back and join me there. It’s a two-holer. But she does this less out of physical need than curiosity, or if she has something urgent that she needs to talk about. Things like how her best friend doesn’t like her anymore, or whether she can watch TGIF on Friday.

Mostly the outhouse is my domain, and the truth is I like it that way. A man needs a place to call his own, even if it is a lowly outhouse. Cindy used to want me to paint the inside a pretty color, something other than its drab green. I refused. Paint it one day, the next she’d have lace curtains in it. So she gave up on it and moved into the house.

Will Rogers once said that he never met an outhouse he didn’t like. I agree with him. I like my outhouse. The roof leaks, it needs painting, and it’s leaning a bit, but that just adds character. It sounds strange, but I prefer an outhouse over a regular bathroom. Every once in a while, I’ll talk to some old timers, and mention my outhouse, and they will get a wistful look in their eye, and tell me how much they miss their old outhouse. I am not kidding.

It’s a place to get away from the dull roar of the household on a school morning. It’s quiet. The Farmer’s Almanac is handy, with it zillions of facts about old varieties of apples and when the moon is full. A couple of new catalogues are waiting if I want some new reading material, or if I need them for other reasons.

The outhouse keeps me in touch with the seasons too. This time of year, I can see Orion on my way to the outhouse at night. I can watch the snow fall an arm’s length away, and see the tracks of deer in the garden.

In the spring, I’ve got a good view of a bluebird house on a fence post 20 feet away. That’s fun to watch. In the summer, I like to look at our garden. Sometimes our dog, Ida, will come in and say hello.

There ARE a few January days and nights when I don’t enjoy the outhouse. But only a few.

SO WHAT KIND OF man would be selling his outhouse, I wondered. (I knew it had to be a man and not a woman.) I called the number last Sunday evening, and asked the man (I was right) if he still had an outhouse for sale. “I sold that,” he answered.

“Was it used?^” I had been waiting month to ask that question, and I managed not to laugh.

It was a new outhouse, he said a bit smugly, I built it.” It had measured four feet by three by seven feet, and a lady east of Cloquet had bought it because she was having trouble with her septic system, he said.

I got the feeling that this guy cares about his outhouses, takes pride in them. He knows the case histories like a social worker.

“I build a couple of them every once in while,” the man explained. Most of the buyers put them in the back of their trucks and take them to their cabins up north. Sometimes they have to portage them, he said, which is why only builds one-holers.

“I like them to last.” he added. “I’ve sold them for $125 all the way to $75.” That barely covers the cost of materials, he said.

He asked if I wanted to buy one. He could make me one if I wanted. I said no, I guess not. He’d have to pay ME to replace my outhouse I thought with equal smugness, but I didn’t tell him that.

The interview ended. At first I was disappointed. I had been hoping for some old guy who would talk about the good old days on the farm, and how he missed the shack. What I got was an ambitious guy my age who made a few extra bucks on the side building outhouses.

But now that I write this, I’m feeling better. It’s reassuring to know that other people still use their little house out back.

Old outhouses never die, even though they may smell that way. They just get taken up north. General MacArthur said that.

So if that outhouse builder becomes flush with success, more power to him.

Too smart for her own dog-gone good ~ October 20, 1994

David Heiller

It finally dawned on me on Monday, and a chill went up my cliche-filled spine. This dog is too darn smart.

I’m referring to our Australian Shepherd, McKenzie. We got her a month ago from Kathy Horvath.

MacKenzie

Kathy is the biggest animal lover this side of Cassanova. She takes in homeless animals. McKenzie had been given to her because she kept running away from her home in Duluth (McKenzie did, not Kathy). The dog had learned how to open the door, and couldn’t resist the sound of children playing down the street.

Kathy and a group called Aussie Rescue in turn gave her to us. It was pretty much love at first sight, even for me. I didn’t want another dog. We already had one, a six-year-old flugel^-hound named Ida.

But the other three family members begged pretty shamelessly. “Let’s just try it, and if she doesn’t work out, we can take her back,” Cindy said. Yeah right.

McKenzie is hard not to like. She catches Frisbees with spectacular leaps. When we play catch with the football or baseball, she runs back and forth, hoping someone drops the ball so she can chase it. She carries a rubber ball through the house, chewing on it to make it squeak and hoping we’ll give it a toss. When we don’t, she bounces it on the floor herself like a basketball player.

She chases almost anything. Any chipmunk or rabbit or bird in our yard had better move fast when McKenzie is around. Three steps and she’s in a dead-run.

David with Ida and MacKenzie

If you shine a flashlight on the ground, she even chases the light. We tried it in the house, then we noticed that she bit holes in the linoleum floor. The only thing she doesn’t chase is cars, which is fine with us.

When you open the car door, she hops in and sits in the front seat, then looks at you with an expectant smile. “Where are we off to now?” she seems to ask.

At night, she lays in bed with us, until I kick her off. Cindy won^’t kick her off. If I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, she’ll be lying in my spot when I come back (McKenzie will, not Cindy). In the morning, I’ll find her cuddled up by Cindy. Then she’ll lay her head over Cindy and look at me and smile.

When we go outside toward the garden or the woods, McKenzie will take off ahead of us in a confident trot, as if she knows where we are going, and by George she’s going to show us the way.

She’s always happy. Her fur is silky. You can’t stop petting her.

A change occurred

Last week we started debating whether to take McKenzie on a trip to see my mother in Brownsville. I said no, and the others said yes, but we needed a unanimous vote for that, so McKenzie was going to stay home.

Malika showing a sick MacKenzie love and support.

That’s when a change came over McKenzie. When we came home from Sunday school on Oct. 16, she was laying in a window well. At first I thought she was trying to stay out of the rain. But she wouldn’t come when we called her.

Then she limped toward us, favoring her right front leg. Later that afternoon, she was favoring her left rear leg. By Sunday night, she could barely get up. She staggered when she walked, like she couldn’t keep her balance.

She wouldn’t sleep with us. She couldn’t jump on the bed. Our happy dog was now a sad dog. It was almost like she was depressed. She would barely eat. We worried about her all night.

On Monday morning we took her to the veterinarian. She had a fever of 104, two degrees above normal. The symptoms of lameness, lethargy, loss of appetite, and depression all pointed in one direction, and she was diagnosed with Lyme Disease.

McKenzie was given tetracycline to take three times a day. Cindy gave her the first one, and informed me that McKenzie WAS going to go to Brownsville with us. I had to agree.

And that’s when McKenzie’s miraculous recovery began. She perked up before the pill had even dissolved in her stomach. She went to work with us Monday and paraded from desk to desk. She smiled when people petted her silky fur. She “buried” a bone that Hazel gave her between my spare shoes in my office. She slept with us Monday night, and played football with us Tuesday morning before the school bus came.

It may be the first time in modern history that a dog has faked Lyme Disease in order to take a trip. Like I said, this dog is too darn smart.

She’ll be editing this paper before long, although some people think that doesn’t take a lot of brains. But that’s another story.

Rattlesnakes are worth the effort ~ October 4, 2006

David Heiller

If you saw a rattlesnake, would you kill it?

I sometimes wonder about that. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, and I respect that, but I can’t see why a person would kill a rattler.

I have to admit I once dispatched one, in the front yard of the parsonage where Gary and Maureen Meiners now live. That was in 1969, and there were so many Blair kids running around I figured it would nail one or two of them.

But chances are that would not have happened. The snake was probably a little out of its territory I could as easily have lifted it up with a shovel and moved it as the nearby ravine. It didn’t want to be there any more than I wanted it to.

Fear and emotion and a certain panicky dislike for snakes won out. Admit it, you see a snake and it startles the heck out of you. They just do. That goes way back to Genesis.

But I’d like to make a pitch for the lowly rattlesnake. For one thing, they are disappearing. You might scoff at that, but it’s true. When was the last time you saw one? People gathered them up by the thousands for their bounty over the past 50 years. The bounty numbers are incomplete, but here’s an example: In 1941, 5,957 bounties were paid in Houston County. In 1979, 4,955 bounties were paid.

That program ended in 1989, thankfully In 1996 timber rattlers were put on a list of threatened species.

Jaime Edwards, who is a rattlesnake specialist with the DNR, told me two weeks ago that she went to a prime rattlesnake spot for five years before she saw one snake there.

One of Edward’s career goals is to see that there are still rattlesnakes when she retires. She is 37 years old.

Her co-worker, Dave Spiering, said some spots that historically had a lot of snakes have been totally wiped out. All the snakes are gone. You might not believe that, but I do.

It might seem unlikely, especially if you live in some places around here like the Winnebago Valley, because snake encounters there are not unusual. About 40 rattlers were reported there just as as road kills last year.

But that’s deceiving, because Winnebago Valley is probably the richest rattlesnake habitat in Minnesota. It’s not like that anywhere else. It’s almost a last bastion for them.

There’s also not a lot of wiggle room for snakes, pardon the pun. A rattlesnake doesn’t even mate until it is 9-11 years old. And it only mates every other year. It gives .birth to 7-11 young. That’s not a prolific creature.

A lot of their habitat is disappearing too. The hills that used to be bare around here in all those old photos are now covered with red cedar. That eliminates snake habitat, particularly the sunny rocks that the females need for gestation of their eggs.

I was glad to go out with Edwards and Spiering last week and see that they are working to preserve the remnant prairies and the rattlesnakes. I think it`s money well spent.

I actually take pride in the fact that we have rattlers around here. What other part of Minnesota has those bragging rights?

There are no documented human deaths in Minnesota due to a rattlesnake bite,

So why kill them?

If you have a snake in an area, move it using a shovel or hoe. Or call the sheriff or state park or game warden. They will find someone to move it.

I think it’s worth the effort.