Culture Shock

Wife of PJ Farmer here...

Well it isn't hard to adjust to such a beautiful place and I have lived in the country before. Heck in one town, we lived on Main Street and were next-door to a dairy farm, can we say "country town"!

The hard part about moving here was leaving my friends and the lack of city culture. There is one african american man at my work and I want to tell him how nice it is to see a face with some color in it. The town that is 15 miles away is actually a pretty ethnically diverse town, but I am used to being surrounded by it, not having to drive to it.


I also miss my pets. Within one month we lost both Rex (our dog) and Flower (our cat) to unnatural deaths.

Rex who we have had in our family for 3+ years, was hit by a car on the hwy we live on. In the city he wouldn’t leave our backyard if we let him. He want to be next to us. When we went camping people were amazed that we rarely had him on a leash. Rex stayed with us, listened to us and was wonderful with Trinity.

When we moved to the country a funny thing happened to Rex, the “hound” in him came out. In the city going for walks he was a “sight hound”, usually watching where we were going and not sniffing very much. In the country his nose got to smell things for the first time. He would run in the low land, the woods, the field, anywhere he could.

Rex was still an obedient dog, but heaven forbid we leave him outside by himself for very long. Once he was outside for about 15 minutes. We got a call from someone who picked him up and he was 5 miles away!! 5 MILES! The boy could run. Spring time was when this all happened. As the snow melted away and brought new smells, something in Rex just clicked. He was a joy to watch. Running, sniffing, chasing… he was alive. Then it happened and so quick too… let out just to go potty in the drizzling rain. We had been tying him up so that he wouldn’t run if we weren’t outside, but hadn’t that time. I guess he saw his opportunity to run across the highway to sniff the lake and that was it.

He was hit twice and died pretty quickly. Daryl buried him under some trees facing our house so that he is always coming home to us. Trinity still talks about him and that was months ago. Landlord says that every dog he had as a kid was killed on that road. Makes me wonder how we can have a dog and keep it alive.

Then in less then a month,our cat Flower was killed. I’ve had Flower for 10 years. She also LOVED the country. She would wander around the yard killing mice, moles and other little vermin. Flower would scamper after us as we worked around the yard. If she was outside when we drove up, she would be there to greet us.

Back story… our landlord has a woodchuck problem. For some reason the woodchuck likes to dig up under the shed part of the barn. Every time the hole is filled in, the woodchuck digs in again. Now being more of a conservationist then our landlord, I would have just left it or bought a live trap. The area the woodchuck is getting into, well there nothing the critter can hurt, so I would probably have just left it. The landlord used old fashioned traps, the evil kind… you know the ones I mean.

Now they had been in that shed for quite a long time with no success. I even forgot they were there. Flower had never gone near that area, so I didn’t link the two… I know, you are ahead of me and yes, Flower died by one of those traps while Daryl and I were away shopping.

Stupid traps!! Flower is now next to Rex with flowers planted on their graves. I also got the landlord to promise never to use those traps again and to only use live traps in the future.

So I had a few things to get over, but the senseless deaths of the pets was and is one of the hardest. We miss them both very much!