Hill Country Summer

Now it is 3am, and two dog sized armadillos are making their noisy way towards my tent.  I am under siege by the damned june bugs.  I really should take a citronella candle from the kitchen.
Quiet Valley Ranch is an odd place during the off season.  Those who go to the Kerrville Folk Festival often have funny ideas about how wonderful it must be to live here year round, because surely the Woodstock fantasy played out during Festival keeps going long past the last keg being tapped.
There is here a collection of vintage hippies who seem to have come here to die.  There are the men ranging in age from 25 to 39 and single.  A few couples, who act as codependent units.  And then there is myself, a single female in her late twenties who makes occasional vague references to working on her book or writing project and cooks all day in the kitchen.
The june bugs are launching an attack, aiming either for my head or the computer screen, it’s hard to tell with a creature this stupid.  Most multi-celled lifeforms can differentiate between solid and empty spaces.  Of course, my bright fluourescent light is now on, so that I can see if the armadillos get too close to the edge of my shelter and I can scare them off if need be.  They’re rather loud and my stoned brain keeps thinking in terms like, “What if it’s actually a werewolf?  What then?  Do I die, or become a werewolf?  Would a werewolf be more or less likely to kill a female human if biting her would make her into a werewolf?  Christ, I hate june bugs.”
I can hear the redneck who looks like a muppet, Spyder, just now driving off in his beaten blue suburban.  Not too long ago I saw him sleeping in the front seat, parked by the kitchen, the door swung wide upon and his legs stretching his naked feet out through the rolled down window.  Spyder swore some sort of oath at dinner to be on the ranch at dawn to get on the roof of the barn and cutting steel with a roaring loud saw hours before the rest of the ranch would get up.  Spyder showed up for dinner tonight with steel game cages to catch one of the kitten litters in and take back to his property to be mouser cats.  Everyone thinks this is proper and right.
Moisture from the river chills the air as it rolls up the hillside.  Dew is being born right now out of the very womb of the air.
I wonder how many of the nights I woke up to sounds of rustling in the brush were because of these same armadillos.  They look like bunny-turtles.  During the last Ice Age armadillos were bigger than pit bulls, prehistoric giant bunny-turtles.
My calves are covered in chigger bites, the awful, hived, allergic reaction sort of bite marks.  Sensitive skin doesn’t mix well with microscopic things tunneling through the epidermis in search of an appropriate place to lay  eggs.  It’s a common problem this time of year in Texas.  “We’re covered in nail polish and chigger bites,” J. gestured broadly down her side, bare breasts swaying in the sunlight.  I invited her and C. to come across the ranch and see the lovely quanza hut that S. put together for me out of pvc pipe and tarps.  The three of us all squinted against six oclock sunlight burning down the hill top.

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