A bucket full of lemmings and Homer’s disgrace
(Lou, Yukon)
The most important events of the last week involve neither lemmings nor our dog. The river has begun to run with ice, temps dropped to -16C and we had our first meagre fall of snowflakes. Winter.
We woke one morning to a flotilla of ice chunks riding the river. Over the past week this has become a steady flow of ice pans spinning and slushing against each other, thick enough now that if you were quick and suicidal you might make a dash from one bank to the other, leaping across them like lily pads.
The beginnings of the ice shelf has filled our eddy and lines the river bank and our creek swirls through a series of frozen falls.
A difficult, arduous and pointless job
For the last week or so we have been swearing, screaming and arguing viciously under the pretext of re-roofing the old cabin.
Things all started amicably enough. We had to rebuild one section of the roof in order to fit a woodstove and make a chimney hole for a recent guest as the cabin had no heating. In order to get the job done in time for his arrival, we used commercially cut lumber. Buoyed as we were with our success in rebuilding one section (about one twentieth), we decided it would be a fine thing to rebuild the whole roof just as winter started and we had a million other things to do.
The online weather report gave us nearly a week until snow was forecast- plenty of time!
The roof was a construction of battered bits of tin nailed into a few rotten logs, but mostly into nothing. The tin sheets had once been removed by a hurricane and looked very much as if they had been replaced by one too.
Underneath was maybe a ton of earth that had been used as insulation. It’s an old bush trick and can work quite well, as long as your tin doesn’t leak. Otherwise it becomes a layer of sodden mud that rots the ceiling batons and, at the occasional spot where it is dry, drifts into your cabin in continuous dusty falls.
We had decided to use the silt as filler to create a new trail for our snowmachine up the bank so, although it was back-breaking work, we were happy to spend days shovelling mud from the roof into a barrow and wheeling it down to our trail.
Bloody logs again
We didn’t have enough to carry on working with lumber so had to continue working with logs. Logs are infuriatingly bulgy, twisted, tapered, knobbly and very difficult to line up with shop cut materials.
And then temps dropped to -16C so the tar I was using to fill the myriad of holes in the tin stopped working and the frost made everything unworkably slippery and we got very cold.
The insulation we had found out in the woods and stolen back from the squirrels was mostly shredded and full of squirrel accessories (dried mushrooms, pine cones, sticks).
I had to do all the insulation because of Neil’s “asthma.” (Yeah, right.)
There wasn’t enough of it and the fibres scratched their way in through my clothing and made me itch fit to scream (which I did, quite a bit). And then there was that Monday deadline for snow and, with no roof on the cabin at all, things started to feel a little pressured.
The miracle is not that one of us didn’t fall through the rotten batons or slide off the tin at -16 degrees of frost, but that we didn’t use the tin punch, hammer and drill to attack each other at any point, we became so sick of it, cold and frustrated. It’s always helpful to have a spouse to blame in these situations. Work goes so much more quickly.
Some help from the bloody dog
Like most sled dogs Homer lives his life on his chain unless we are working with him or taking him for a walk. It may seem cruel but that’s what he is used to and he was not raised to be a house dog. But we thought we could let him loose and keep an eye on him whilst we worked.
It is hard to explain to a sled dog what the difference is between an old bit of bone or a stick and a brand new leather glove, a pair of rubber gloves coated in marine grease, a dustpan and brush, a broom, a pot of roofing screws and finally our only good working ratchet. The difference is YOU CAN EAT THE BONES AND STICKS BUT NOT THE REST, HOMER! Doh.
Two hours spent coming the bushes for our temptingly rubber-handled ratchet meant Homer was back on his chain for the duration.
I’d love to be able to say that we finished rebuilding the cabin roof just in time before those first dainty snowflakes lighted.
We didn’t. We managed to finish it just NOT in time which turned the last half hour or so of work into a 5 hour session of me spread across the roof like a pond skater whilst Neil tried to push me up by the wellies and move ladders so I could finish the last screws and patch tar on to the fast disappearing tin sheets.
The cabin roof is only four feet off the ground at the eaves so I probably would have been OK if I fell. That’s because the foundations are rotten and so it is sinking into the ground.
So it is utterly pointless to replace the roof at this stage. We knew that, but we did so anyway because we thought it might be a good learning process and a bit of fun. And I would have had that written on my fucking tombstone if it had killed me.
The truth about lemmings
And so to lemmings in buckets.
Disney once made a documentary that showed hundreds of lemmings plunging over a cliff, one after the other, and claimed it was an instinctive behaviour that occurred naturally in the population to reduce numbers when necessary.
It’s well known now that this footage was faked and the poor wee things were driven over the cliff by some underling of the film crew.
Or were they?
We’ve just found 3 dead lemmings, all having died at different times apparently, in a bucket beside the porch. There was nothing to attract them into the bucket.
So one climbed the porch, plopped into the big white hole with no means of escape, for no reason at all.
Then his mate saw him and thought “That’s my mate Tony, dead at the bottom of this white thing, I’ll jump in.” Plop.
And the next “Oh look Tony and Dave all stiff and cold down there!” Plop.
We might as well use this to our advantage and so I emptied the suicides into the trash barrel and replaced the pale with a dob of peanut butter in it.
By the next morning, three of them again. Two were still alive and huddled together on their dead friend for warmth.
“Ah” said Neil.
I said, “They’re really sweet.” They are. They are like fluffy little hamsters.
Neil said “Shall we tip them out?”
Pause.
We both remembered this time last fall, living in a tent with lemmings creeping over our faces and through our hair whilst we tried to sleep.
“I’ll get a big stick” I said.
The most important events of the last week involve neither lemmings nor our dog. The river has begun to run with ice, temps dropped to -16C and we had our first meagre fall of snowflakes. Winter.
We woke one morning to a flotilla of ice chunks riding the river. Over the past week this has become a steady flow of ice pans spinning and slushing against each other, thick enough now that if you were quick and suicidal you might make a dash from one bank to the other, leaping across them like lily pads.
The beginnings of the ice shelf has filled our eddy and lines the river bank and our creek swirls through a series of frozen falls.
A difficult, arduous and pointless job
For the last week or so we have been swearing, screaming and arguing viciously under the pretext of re-roofing the old cabin.
Things all started amicably enough. We had to rebuild one section of the roof in order to fit a woodstove and make a chimney hole for a recent guest as the cabin had no heating. In order to get the job done in time for his arrival, we used commercially cut lumber. Buoyed as we were with our success in rebuilding one section (about one twentieth), we decided it would be a fine thing to rebuild the whole roof just as winter started and we had a million other things to do.
 |
| Look at that. Marvellous. And so easy to do. |
The online weather report gave us nearly a week until snow was forecast- plenty of time!
The roof was a construction of battered bits of tin nailed into a few rotten logs, but mostly into nothing. The tin sheets had once been removed by a hurricane and looked very much as if they had been replaced by one too.
Underneath was maybe a ton of earth that had been used as insulation. It’s an old bush trick and can work quite well, as long as your tin doesn’t leak. Otherwise it becomes a layer of sodden mud that rots the ceiling batons and, at the occasional spot where it is dry, drifts into your cabin in continuous dusty falls.
 |
| Still shovelling |
Bloody logs again
We didn’t have enough to carry on working with lumber so had to continue working with logs. Logs are infuriatingly bulgy, twisted, tapered, knobbly and very difficult to line up with shop cut materials.
 |
| "Oh for fuck's sake!" |
The insulation we had found out in the woods and stolen back from the squirrels was mostly shredded and full of squirrel accessories (dried mushrooms, pine cones, sticks).
 |
| Smiling through the tears |
There wasn’t enough of it and the fibres scratched their way in through my clothing and made me itch fit to scream (which I did, quite a bit). And then there was that Monday deadline for snow and, with no roof on the cabin at all, things started to feel a little pressured.
 |
| Job abandoned. Arguing off camera for a bit. |
Some help from the bloody dog
Like most sled dogs Homer lives his life on his chain unless we are working with him or taking him for a walk. It may seem cruel but that’s what he is used to and he was not raised to be a house dog. But we thought we could let him loose and keep an eye on him whilst we worked.
It is hard to explain to a sled dog what the difference is between an old bit of bone or a stick and a brand new leather glove, a pair of rubber gloves coated in marine grease, a dustpan and brush, a broom, a pot of roofing screws and finally our only good working ratchet. The difference is YOU CAN EAT THE BONES AND STICKS BUT NOT THE REST, HOMER! Doh.
 |
| In disgrace in his lean to |
 |
| The last twat of a rafter hammered in |
We didn’t. We managed to finish it just NOT in time which turned the last half hour or so of work into a 5 hour session of me spread across the roof like a pond skater whilst Neil tried to push me up by the wellies and move ladders so I could finish the last screws and patch tar on to the fast disappearing tin sheets.
The cabin roof is only four feet off the ground at the eaves so I probably would have been OK if I fell. That’s because the foundations are rotten and so it is sinking into the ground.
 |
| Contemplating a suicidal dash across the river after a week of work on that bastard roof |
 |
| Finished. And no thanks to our idiot dog |
And so to lemmings in buckets.
Disney once made a documentary that showed hundreds of lemmings plunging over a cliff, one after the other, and claimed it was an instinctive behaviour that occurred naturally in the population to reduce numbers when necessary.
It’s well known now that this footage was faked and the poor wee things were driven over the cliff by some underling of the film crew.
Or were they?
We’ve just found 3 dead lemmings, all having died at different times apparently, in a bucket beside the porch. There was nothing to attract them into the bucket.
So one climbed the porch, plopped into the big white hole with no means of escape, for no reason at all.
Then his mate saw him and thought “That’s my mate Tony, dead at the bottom of this white thing, I’ll jump in.” Plop.
And the next “Oh look Tony and Dave all stiff and cold down there!” Plop.
We might as well use this to our advantage and so I emptied the suicides into the trash barrel and replaced the pale with a dob of peanut butter in it.
By the next morning, three of them again. Two were still alive and huddled together on their dead friend for warmth.
“Ah” said Neil.
I said, “They’re really sweet.” They are. They are like fluffy little hamsters.
Neil said “Shall we tip them out?”
Pause.
We both remembered this time last fall, living in a tent with lemmings creeping over our faces and through our hair whilst we tried to sleep.
“I’ll get a big stick” I said.
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