Killing Things with Rocks

My rural beginnings

Growing up in the country meant two things: boredom, and cat tragedies.

Fine, I’ll say it: cat-astrophies! I don’t have an MFA in Laffy Taffy Studies for nothing.

It’d happen once a year or so: Dad would come home, rigid with panic. He’d walk into the house, avoiding eye contact, and whisper something to my mom before high-tailing it upstairs to change out of his teacher clothes. 

Mom would approach me gingerly. "Honey," she’d always start. "Your dad is so sorry, but…(insert horrific accident here)."

He’d hit one of our many outdoor cats, who’d darted under his car in the driveway. He’d closed the automatic garage door only to watch one unsuccessfully dash underneath it. He’d seen one flattened in the road and recognized it as one of our own.

Even today, I flinch when someone calls me "honey." I know there’s murder coming.

Our ever-rotating cat squad made for lots of cute and cuddly little-t trauma. On two occasions, one crawled up into the warm engine of the car where it slept, undetected. One of the two made it to my mom’s hair appointment in town and back, knocked unconscious and permed, but otherwise okay. The other absolutely did not. 

Another, Taco, disappeared for a few weeks until we found him in the woods, shivering and covered in maggots. He recovered but was left blinded by the ordeal. Smokey, my favorite, darted out of my arms in the vet’s parking lot and ran away. Devastated, I spent two weeks blaming myself, until the Friday night we pulled into the garage to find him perched on the lawn mower as though nothing had happened.

Then there were the kittens. We didn’t spay or neuter—responsible pet ownership had yet to be invented—so we could rely on at least one new litter every spring. Stillbirths were common, as were failures to thrive. We almost always lost at least one. 

I was wrecked when Harvey, one of our mama cats, refused to care for her kittens. We watched helplessly as they grew weaker until finally, in desperation, I tried shutting her into a box with them. She’d have no choice but to feed them, I thought. It didn’t work. We lost them all. 

Mostly, our cats and kittens were a source of pure joy for me. One spring, we had two expecting at the same time. Pepper dutifully gave birth in one of the boxes we’d prepared in the garage, but Patches went missing for a few days until my dad heard sounds coming from our treehouse, where she’d slipped away to have hers. 

After moving Patches’s litter into the garage, we’d been forced to put a note next to each box, a kitten inventory. We’d discovered that when one of the mamas slipped outside for a while, the other would steal her kittens, methodically carrying each one by the scruff of their neck back to her own box.  

I practically lived in the garage in the weeks leading up to the new arrivals, marveling at the hard little blobs squirming around in their mom’s belly. I’d ever-so-gently poke and prod, attempting to pinch each little head under the fur and guess how many were coming. I was in heaven.

During the quiet times between litters and deaths, I was bored a lot.

We lived in the rolling countryside outside Loudonville, Ohio (population: 3,000) in a modest split-level, white on top, with maroon cinderblock at the bottom. My parents had found the flat, house-ready spot and contacted the farmer whose cow pasture it sat on. He agreed to sell them a two-acre plot for $2,000. 

They then bought house plans from a catalog—along with all the materials—for $20,000, and hired an Amish man to help dig out a basement. Along with the help of some friends, my dad did the rest, and in 1972, two years before I came along, the family home at 2523 Township Road 457 was complete. (I never win the porn-name game. First pet, plus the street I grew up on? Make it rain for Bandit Township Road 457!)

As an adult, I long for what I had growing up in the country. As a kid, it was harder to appreciate. We had a big dumb garden where I had to mulch, pull weeds, and a million other tasks I hated. Our big dumb yard was dotted with trees, which meant endless days spent picking up small dumb sticks. Nature! It’s the worst.

During summers off school, my dad had a painting business and would leave early every morning. With both parents at work, I was ready to lead the life of leisure I longed for. No such luck: Dad left notes on the kitchen counter, never-ending lists of tasks to complete by the time he got home. Snap beans. Shuck corn. Clean the cat dung off the garage floor. Always "dung." I’ve only ever heard my dad cuss once, a lone “SHIT!” when he dropped a carton of eggs onto the ~carpeted~ kitchen floor. My brother fell off a kitchen stool, he laughed so hard.

The chores never ended. If there had been traffic out where we lived, I would have walked right into it. 

Otherwise, life was pretty carefree. I had a swingset, tire swing, and treehouse in our backyard, which backed up to woods where I was free to explore and collect chigger bites.

We had a fire ring for hot dog roasting, a burn barrel for trash, and a gas tank filled every few months by a big truck that drove through the grass and pulled up right next to our house. 

I loved tagging along with Dad on his regular visits to the county dump, where all our cans and other non-burnables went. (Another reoccurring, though less serious cat tragedy: the Campbell Soup-heads we’d often find stuck and banging around the garage.)

Also in need of rescue were the neighboring cows who would get loose a few times a year. It was a perfectly normal sight to look out my bedroom window and see cattle spread across our front yard, eating our exquisite domestic grass, with a few thrill-seekers looking on from the middle of the road. We’d call the neighboring farmer and head outside to start rounding them up until he came.

We were surrounded on three sides by pasture and an electric fence. Crawling underneath to go explore was like a real-life game of Operation: one wrong move and you got zapped, hard.

Once I made it safely underneath, my next priority was to avoid one of my biggest fears: getting charged by a bull. Heart pounding, I’d sprint to my intended destination—often, the swamp where I’d torture turtles by skipping rocks at them—leaping over cow patties, terrified of being speared. Never mind that when the herd was nearby, they’d always ignore me.

Once, I came upon a horrifying discovery: a full cow skeleton, fur still clinging to it in pieces, stuck in the mud surrounding the swamp. Even now, I can remember it vividly. Fresh air has a way of locking those memories in forever.

I loved riding the Frankensteined bike my dad had put together for me—black BMX-style handlebars, comically large banana seat, a basket festooned with plastic flowers—up and down the hilly roads. Orange safety flag flopping wildly from side to side. Our half-Bassett Hound, half-German Shepherd Bandit racing his comically short legs alongside me.

I’d head to the creek to fish or to the concrete cylinder drain that ran underneath the road where I could sit and be moody. Why did no one have a crush on me??? Did I need a sexier Garfield sweatshirt?

On the weekends, I’d go bug our neighbors up the road, Steve and Diane Hughes. Diane doted on me, plying me with cookies and books. She even gave me a shirt with a cartoon character on it, "Tina Tomato," a nickname she’d still use for me years later as my seventh-grade home economics teacher. (My parents admonished me many times to stop calling her "Diane" in class, but she never minded.) 

If I begged hard enough, my brother Brian would join me on my bike expeditions. We’d head to the creek to dig up worms and throw rocks at frogs. Once, we nailed a little guy so hard, we broke his leg. We fashioned a small splint out of a stick and tied it to him. Hope he recovered. 

Brian was four years older than me; my sister Aimee, five years older. Mostly, they didn’t want to hang with me unless made to do so. I don’t blame them. I was a sticky little tornado who never stopped talking. 

I spent a lot of time entertaining myself. I jumped rope until my lungs burned. I’d throw a ball in the air, hit it, then walk to wherever it landed and repeat, for hours. I once bent down to pick up what I thought was the black wiffleball bat but was instead a snake, forming the fear that to this day shows up regularly in nightmare form.  

One summer, I dedicated myself to learning how to do a back handspring. I did miles of round-offs across the lawn, but never did work up the nerve. I couldn’t get past the vision of me crumpled in the grass, my neck snapped. "Honey," my mom would say over my body. "You didn’t mean to, but…."

Thanks to the crippled frogs, wanderlusty cows, and surprise snakes, country life was never what you’d call boring. And yet, I was always bored. My siblings had their own interests. My friends lived in town. My cats were all pancaked in the road.

I know now how lucky I was to have such a bored and lightly traumatized existence. I learned how to keep myself busy and let my imagination run wild, skills that—for the most part—have served me well.

Now, I know: I will most likely never again kill anything with a rock.