Near our front fence we had a pile of wood. It was there because we use firewood to heat our house. This wasn’t your normal firewood. This was chunks that were going to require a good deal of work to split. This pile of wood had been sitting there for about 3 months pending time for us to move it. Now understand that this wasn't a small pile of wood but the amount that is hauled in 3 full size pickup loads. So we have a big heaping pile of chunks of wood that need to be moved to the back yard and split.

Well yesterday was the day. My beloved Charlie decided that he was going to finish moving that pile of wood. He had gotten tired of seeing them sitting there that it was time to move it. Out comes the wheelbarrow, off goes the shirt, and on goes the sweatband to keep the sweat off his glasses. It’s about 90 degrees out and the humidity is very high so ain't too long before the sweat starts rolling. He loads up a wheelbarrow full of these big chunks and off around the side he goes to the back yard. He comes back just griping because when the wheelbarrow was full the tire was flat. So its off to find the pump to pump up the tire.

He gets it pumped up and back to the woodpile. A couple of loads later I hear him squalling and fussing again. I go out to see what’s going on and can’t help but laugh. Apparently he had disturbed an ant's nest. There were ants crawling all over him up his arms, his legs, etc. Everywhere there were little tiny black ants....so a break is required to get to get the ants off and after getting those all brushed off its back to the woodpile again.

Later on in the afternoon its getting time for mosquitoes to be out so of course now he’s not only swatting sweat bees and ants, now mosquitoes are thrown into the mix. While outside with him I see him grab a small piece of wood and lo and behold there is a really big mosquito on a log. He whales into it and grinds it into the wood but when he moves the smaller piece away, the mosquito just up and flies away. (Apparently it had found a crevice) Needless to say he decides that is a major mosquito and he wants nothing to do with that one that can be ground into wood and still fly off.

Well after several more trips he has finally started reaching the bottom of the stack. Evening has come on now and what do you think he found? Yep, slugs. Now if there is one thing Charlie hates worse than any other creature it is a slimy slug. He will pick up a snake and go eye to eye with spiders and even tolerate mosquitoes or whatever but he hates slugs with a passion. He says they are slimy and disgusting and he don’t want them anywhere around. Now this wood he’s had to move has slugs on it, on top of all the other critters.

He grabs a piece of bark to scrap them off the wood all the time griping and dancing around cause he don’t want the gross slimy things to touch him. At one point I believe you could see the rain dance beginning to get underway....there were just so many of them around. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that many at one time in one place.

After all was said and done he finally got the wood moved and then