Following Edge

 

It's almost required to fear nothing when you own a house and owning even a small farm requires a fearlessness that is nearly beyond me. It's not that I'm afraid of much. Last year, I kept things in order while one of the horses (Snickers) lost nearly 6 gallons of blood while we were trying to stem the bleeding and get her to the vet. (6 gallons is about a human's total blood volume, but happily only a sixth of a horse's). I've also endured disposing of deceased animals and nearly turning over a tractor, but, this year, fate seems to be upping the ante.

My only phobias (irrational fears) are a fear of heights and a fear of swarms of insects. The pump house shown (where we get our water, you city dwellers) was my test for both of these. The streetlight (175W Mercury Vapor Lamp, technically) that lights our property at night went out and I started with our tallest ladder to gingerly collect the bulb and replace it (without looking down, of course). Regrettably, that didn't fix the lamp and, after buying a replacement, I had to set up a ladder on top of the slanted roof to get above the lamp to replace it. You can see the acrophobic's nightmare of ladders in the first picture. Needless to say, I had to steel myself to accomplish this, but I got it done and you can see the bright and shiny results in the second picture.

So far as the other phobia goes, I heard a "crackling" in the insulation of the pump house roof this summer and knew there must be a nest of carpenter ants up there. I called Mr. Rogers Pest Management (who really is as nice as he sounds and who I would highly recommend). He said, "Definately a nest up there. This would be a really easy job. I would feel bad about charging you $250 for it when you could just go in there with a razor knife, pull down that insulation and spray everything with bug spray". I explained that being in a tiny room pulling apart a nest of thousands of (now angry) carpenter ants was in my "top 10 list of things never to do". He said he could do it within a few weeks if I wanted him to do it, but he thought I could do it just fine. Well, I steeled myself to it after 4 days of reciting exterminator mantras and took care of it.

Now, I just hope that the pump house doesn't have any further troubles and that I don't develop any new phobias for the farm to exploit.