Lee Lynch Archives

The Amazon Trail: Rats Fleeing A Sinking Ship

Lee Lynch | November 18, 2020

Topics: exterminators, housing, Lee Lynch, rodents, The Amazon Trail

In this month’s installment of The Amazon Trail: as the vermin is slowly shooed from the halls of power, Lee Lynch finds her own house suddenly overrun by literal rodents.

I’ve heard the idiom “like rats fleeing a sinking ship” often lately, and while the metaphor is apt for what’s going on in the United States, at our house it’s even more befitting.

Merriam Webster notes, “Almost all the early uses of the ‘sinking ship’ analogy were in reference to political scandals.” The phrase goes back four hundred years. Originally, the rodents, thought to sense impending calamity, were said to escape from buildings. In the late 17th century, the phrase changed to sinking ships.

However we choose to describe what’s happening in D.C., the exodus is welcome. As every type of haughty, sinister, conniving, autocratic rodent changes course, here at home we have been under assault by honest vermin: rats and moles. Shudder.

We get a bit of rain on the Oregon Coast. As a matter of fact, last night we had a drenching storm that tore yet more shingles from our roof, dismantled the neighbors’ shed, and generally made a mess outside. One can hardly blame critters for taking shelter.

But not in our house. The wretched beasts.

‘Tis the season for rats, but moles? They are gradually digging bulwarks around our home, or a moat — it’s hard to tell which. Someone said to leave them alone, they aerate the soil. That would be fine on a bit of acreage, but our house takes up most of our land. One of our kind community members is somewhat of an expert at mole dispersal. He does this only for friends and we are fortunate in our friends.

“Let’s hope it works,” he said when I thanked him. All the more so because we just put down a mini lawn for our unbelievably adorable rescue dog Betty. No moles allowed. Par for the course, little eight-pound Betty doesn’t care for the grass potty patch. I suppose we could turn it into an L-shaped putting green for my sweetheart.

Meanwhile, a demolition crew has been taking down the house two over from us. It stood empty for a while, including a few weeks with no doors. The inhabitants tended toward the small, gnawing, whiskered mammal type. The ones with long hairless tails which they neither comb over nor color. The abhorred rats.

Once the backhoe sank its teeth into that forty- or fifty-year-old home, the rats abandoned ship. Several of them found refuge under our house. At first, we weren’t sure what was making those sounds, and we already had a contract with an exterminator, of whom we’ve become quite fond. As a matter of fact, the deceased owner of the demolished house always had him in for tea and conversation during his service calls.

I have a memory from way back in my university days. There was a crash pad a few blocks from my school, owned by a slumlord whose son was a fellow student. The school intellectuals spent long nights there, drinking, doping, and discussing the urgent matters college kids everywhere worry about. One of the uninvited residents was Ralph the Rat who, it was explained, spent his time brushing his teeth behind the walls. That was the sound we were hearing beneath our subflooring.

Manufactured homes, these days, can be as permanent as politicians in Washington. We own our bit of land so the house was installed with the intention of staying put and, because of its foundation, is considered real property. Our poured concrete slab sits a few feet below ground level. From there a contractor secured the house with piers and anchoring equipment, creating a considerable crawl space. The metal supports are sheathed in blocks of wood.

Rats like to brush their teeth — chew — on wood. From there, they might create openings into the insulation and, unstopped, gnaw through the plywood subflooring and, like Ralph, gain access to the inside of the walls. I once had a cat named Poppins, who, when I moved into a house, spent the entirety of his days chasing the rat that had gotten into the wall while the house lay vacant. Poor guy never made his capture — the rat was evicted in a less dramatic way.

It creeps me out even to write about these creatures who, with equally creepy insects, will likely inherit the earth once humans destroy it.

Finally, our exterminator was here so often over a period of about three weeks, he’d practically moved in with my sweetheart and me. It’s been three days now and no toothbrushing from the netherworld. Our pied piper will come back to remove any new little corpses, but we’re hopeful any live critters, rats or moles, will have fled. If only it were so easy and relatively quick in our capital.

A problem remains on the home front: we still don’t know how the rats got in. We urgently need to find that cursed crevice. But now that I think of it, we even more urgently need to block the rat route into the White House.

Copyright Lee Lynch 2020. Top Photo by Yunu Dinata on Unsplash.

The Amazon Trail: Nah, We Ain’t No Sissies

Lee Lynch | September 18, 2020

Topics: Accidental Desperados, coronavirus, COVID-19, Lee Lynch, Old Lesbians Organizing For Change, Rainbow Gap, The Amazon Trail, West Coast wildfires

Lee Lynch returns from a long rest with a new edition of The Amazon Trail about work, aging, and finding ways to survive the hard times we’re all faced with.

I have been resting. A strange activity for me, but I had no choice. I was so worn out, I remember promising myself that I would never hurry again as long as I lived. The first two of six weeks I mostly slept, or lay unmoving beside my sweetheart. Awake, I read thrillers, and when those books didn’t ease my mental and emotional exhaustion, in desperation I read Ann Rule, the master of true crime.

So many people are afflicted or have died from what my sweetheart coined trump flu; so many people have died or lost their homes to the fires around us; so many people are suffering under the current administration; so many people are fighting the loss of democracy in the United States; so many people are victims of blatant and insidious racism — I feel like a sissy to have needed rest.

On July 31, I sent publisher Bold Strokes Books my new novel, Accidental Desperados. Four years in the writing, the Our Happy Hours anthology with Renee Bess tucked into those same years, and, monthly, “The Amazon Trail.” I used to be this productive and work full-time, but now?

Now I’ve lived three quarters of a century. It makes a difference. When I mentioned this to dear indefatigable Arden Eversmeyer of the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project and Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, she said she’d never thought of her age that way. She concluded, however, that she’s lived nine tenths of a century. Which made me think, nah, we ain’t no sissies.

I was not in good shape. Just the thought of sitting in my writing chair made me nauseous with anxiety. I seriously talked with my sweetheart about ending “The Amazon Trail.” I’ve been writing it for over thirty-four years. But some people have told me it’s my best writing. Others, that they’d miss it.

I rested some more.

I’d told my publisher four years ago I was writing a quartet of books, a lesbian family saga. Accidental Desperados is only the second novel and after I complete the series, I want to write another Pacific Northwest book, like, but not like, Sweet Creek from 2006. I’m afraid I’ll run out of time. Or brain. Or, again, energy. At the stage of fatigue I landed in, my memory was shot. I tripped over objects as familiar as my own Asics. Some days I could only lie on my back and breathe. How would I even survive the current political turmoil, much less write a book?

Then the wildfires came, and the smoke — air quality indexes over 500. A friend just south of us was at level three, the highest evacuation level, also known as GO! Another recently widowed friend had moved into her new home only a few days before she got the alert to evacuate. A third, whose health is compromised, called from the city to ask about the breathability of air on the coast. It was worse here. We won’t let King the cat out on his catio for fear of damaging his young lungs.

Like many others, I’ve pretty much been stuck inside since the advent of the trump flu and now smoke prevents me from walking my one to two miles a day. What a perfect time to write! I’ve slowly overcome my aversion to the office and writing chair by thinking of the lives lived by rural Afghans, of people of color who’ve become walking targets on the streets of America, of Native Americans slammed by the virus, of Arctic and rainforest animals displaced by profiteers. This is no time to idle.

I am privileged to be able to rest, much less write books instead of scratching a living from the land or scrambling to fill amazon.com orders ten hours a day. My long vacation has revived me. Once again I can balance on the lip of an empty canyon I’ll rush to fill with words that tell the story half-written in my mind. Six weeks ago, I might have shelved this third, standalone novel in the Rainbow Gap series. But a lot of people, with a lot more reasons to be tired, keep working.

Heck, I’m nowhere near nine tenths of a century old.

Top Photo: Lee Lynch by Mary Deutcher

The Amazon Trail: Femmes And Their Gadgets

Lee Lynch | April 22, 2019

Topics: Drones, gadgets, Lee Lynch, power tools, The Amazon Trail

In this month’s Amazon Trail, Lee Lynch tries, and mostly fails, to understand her wife’s natural facility with machines and appliances.

It’s a shame, the things they don’t teach us at Butch School. In the Femme Gadgets class, I learned the basics of eyelash brushes and powdering noses and hoop, stud, drop, climber, and jacket earrings. The femme who has been cutting my hair for about twenty years was today appropriately made up and earring-ed, her own hair mostly blue with a complementary green streak along the part. She obviously has great fun with her various girly tools.

But that’s not what she was all excited about. It was Vector, her Kickstarter miniature robot. Vector is not without its useful functions, but is mainly an adorable, irresistible gadget that has learned to say her name.

Then, lo and behold, I arrive home and the mailperson has brought my sweetheart a five-inch fan. Small enough for travel, it runs off a USB energy source or batteries. It’s the most flexible little fan I’ve ever seen. She set it up and demonstrated its features one by one, including its big clamp, its three speeds, and the fact that it was for me. I’m staring it down as it challenges me to try it a day later, after I’ve forgotten all the instructions.

My sweetheart also wears a Fitbit and figured out every one of its functions, though she reminds me that we haven’t yet checked her heart rate when kissing.

When the arthritis in my thumbs flared up, she was the one who found me a nifty gadget that twists off bottlecaps and lifts up tabs to open cat food cans. She also found me an electric jar and bottle opener which I’m still learning to use — she was an expert within five minutes. If I manage to position the clamps so they embrace a lid, I get stuck at the dismounting and the contents splatter all over the counter.

Possibly the most exciting of her gadgets, which come free, except for taxes, through a reviewing program, was the little toy drone. She’s still trying to get it to work again after hours of setting it up and experimenting. One of our male, mechanically-inclined neighbors, who owns three real drones, came over to help, but it was my sweetheart who diagnosed the problem: the battery power drains so fast the wee drone bounces off walls, kitchen appliances, lamps, mirrors, and doors. The neighbor periodically asks if we have our pilot licenses yet.

A few weeks ago, a planter arrived. It’s about five foot by three foot, and three feet high. Assembly required. Lots of it, including a water gauge thingy. My sweetheart loves doing this stuff. I was sent to the office to write. Last week, the “shed” made its appearance. (We’re real friendly with our UPS driver.) It’s basically an ultra-sturdy toy chest for garden equipment. Or for toy drones with unresolved issues. She was exhilarated: fabrication required using the electric screwdriver I gave her as a jokey birthday gift. I’ve discovered the joke is on me.

I thought I was gadget-happy, but do not get between a femme and her mechanical puzzles. Even the clunkers.

The rice cooker wasn’t really a clunker. It worked fine for many meals. Then one day my sweetheart forgot to place the bowl in the cooker before filling it with water — the electronics were soaked. It still worked, but she enthusiastically welcomed the next rice cooker she was sent to review.

I voluntarily absent myself from her industrious zone when tricky things come her way. The dash cam, for example, took some doing on her part. As have the cat towers, all three of them. I offered to assemble the most recent one, despite knowing I’d need to give up and ask for her help when I inevitably blew it, but she forestalled that eventuality by declining my offer.

I have the patience to write a novel, but not to read directions. Especially when something comes along like the OBD2 which, she had to explain to me, is an automotive onboard diagnostic tool. But the tool is useless on its own. You have to download an app called Torque to get the two to work together. Heck, I had enough trouble setting up the simple Mini Google Home and even it couldn’t answer my questions about how an OBD works.

Where no woman has gone before, my sweetheart perseveres. We don’t have a lawn, barely even a yard, but when we get another pint-sized dog, she plans to fence and grass over a patch behind the house so we can let our puppy-to-be outside in the Oregon rain. The only obstacle she came up with was buying a lawn mower. She had her eye on lightweight electric models when, voila, she received one to review. And build.

We now both have car battery chargers and automatic tire inflators. I’m not sure how I’ll make them work if I’m alone on the road in my fifteen-year-old car. Even Vector needs a femme.