We used to have 95 acres of land up there, near Parksville and Liberty, with a house that was built in one night, replacing a house that burned down. It also had a barn.
We built a new house up the hill, accessible by a driveway, with a great view of the mountainous terrain, and spent three-day weekends up there.
We planted hundreds of pine trees through a program with New York State, and had an instant forest. That attracted all kinds of animals, including a raccoon, who set up digs under a pile of branches near our parking pad. We provided her with food and a dog food bowl to wash it in. She came out at dusk to eat. One time she climbed the steps and stood on our deck, facing us while we avoided the rain, by watching TV inside. She looked like an unkempt cat, but our kempt cat was sitting with us.
The trees also attracted bald eagles, who would skim over them, hunting prey. We had to check our Roger Tory Peterson field guide to believe what we were seeing.
Tent caterpillars made progress walking our deck's fence, heading to or from their tents on trees.
We found a pond in a roadside ditch. Toads had dropped off eggs there, and we realized the pond would evaporate and leave the tadpoles and toadberts high and dry. We rounded up our Mason jars and gave them new homes on our stream. Two things resulted:
1. We had a lot of toads after that.
2. We had a lot fewer bugs.
We had a gigantic barn, and my father did repair work on it. Once we found a corn snake snoozing in it, and after looking up its type in the field guide, we took him home. The puzzled snake spent the winter in a terrarium in my grade school, entertaining kids by his mere presence, enjoying the warmth of a school building and its heat light, and chomping on mice once a week. Next June, with school closed, he went back into the barn with a great story for his buddies.
The barn's best animal was a yellow-bellied sapsucker, which is also a woodpecker. He banged on the barn's tin roof very loudly, which brought bugs up through the holes in the roof to find out what all the fuss was about. The bird promptly ate them.
Apparently that's what sapsuckers do...they riddle trees with holes, which attract insects. to eat the sap. Then the sapsuckers return to eat both the bugs and the sap. No saps, these suckers.
We named this bird "The Barn Banger," and we saw him often.
We would hear gnawing at night, and came out to find "Porky the Porcupine" chomping on the wooden house. One time we found him busily eating a plastic trowel. I found out later that porcupines eat plastic for the sugar and sweat generated by human users.
Lastly, our orange cat Nomad (official name Harry A. Smith) loved it. He didn't like going there through the Lincoln Tunnel, but once at "The Farm," he'd trot up the stairs ahead of us. He spend a great deal of time snoozing on the deck, using the cat door. My brother and I would explore the acreage, and he'd follow along, an sometimes lead us back.
When we'd leave, he'd get in the car, and offer piteous meows. He didn't want to leave. Neither did we.
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