i am sure of it

Uncle Bill, my great uncle, told me that many years ago, he was at the shack by himself and was shaving in the kitchen. There was a splash in the bowl of water he was using for shaving, and he looked down and saw a snake in the bowl. He looked up the wall where the snake had fallen from, and there was another snake on the wall which seemed to be looking down at the snake in the bowl. He said he was convinced that the snake on the wall was the wife of the snake in the bowl, and she was scowling at him for falling off the wall into the bowl. The snake on the wall made a hissing sound, which translated into english was: "You get back up here, right now!"
That was the first time I heard about there being snakes in the cabin. After that, my brother and I were always on the lookout for snakes. We found some snake skins in kitchen, left behind when the snakes shed their skins, but it was years later before I actually saw a snake slither up the wall. The cabin is made of logs, with oakum chinking between the logs. There was plaster between the logs to cover the oakum, but it had come loose in a lot of places. The logs and loose plaster gave the snakes enough non-vertical surfaces so they could find a way to slither right up the wall.
Snakes slithering up the wall is one of the reasons that some people do not like to stay in the cabin. Also mice scampering across the floor, up the walls and in the attic. The occasional uninvited bat also causes some people to look less than favorably on sleeping there. In fact, when we visited in the early seventies, my mother and father pitched a tent over by the dam, and that's where we slept.
Some people choose the Skyline Motel or the Timber Inn Motel in Phillips. I think my brother and his girlfriend chose the Skyline Motel after she tried unsuccessfully to get the snakes on the wall to go away by spraying perfume on them.
I felt fortunate that my girlfriend was the type of person willing to spend some nights in the cabin, despite the potential for various reptilian and mammalian interlopers. I suppose we were really the interlopers. The animals had the cabin to themselves probably more than ninety percent of the time. I'm sure it was annoying when some big mammals arrived out of the blue and came in acting like they owned the place.
When we arrived, there was a birch tree fallen across the dirt track in front of the cabin. The track actually looped around, so it was no more than a nuisance to have to back the car up and drive on the other part of the track to get past the tree. It seemed strange that all the small branches on the lower side of the tree had been carefully cut off. We wondered why someone would have done that. Upon closer inspection, we realized that it wasn't someone, but some thing. The tree had been felled by a beaver, and all the branches of beaver height and lower had been gnawed off and carried away. Fortunately, the beaver seemed to be thinking ahead when it chewed into the trunk of the tree. If it had chewed about ninety degrees counter clockwise, the tree would have fallen on top of the shack. That would have been bad for the beaver, because it wouldn't have been able to get very many branches, and bad for us, because it probably would have caused the roof to cave in.
There was a log book in the cabin, that people who come there sometimes write in. One of the other owners of the place had been there a few weeks before my girlfriend and I arrived, and had written about the tree being across the road, and that they couldn't do anything about it, since they didn't have a chain saw. We didn't have a chain saw either, but there were a couple of bow saws and an axe in the shack. It didn't take us very long to cut through the little bit of tree trunk the beaver hadn't already cut through, and drag the tree so it was parallel to the dirt track, and no longer blocking it. Grandad had already told me what a poor opinion he had of that other owner, and when I told him about the log entry saying they couldn't do anything because they didn't have a chain saw, he had yet another confirmation. He was pleased when he found out that I had written in the log about how easy it was to move the tree without a chain saw.
The tree was still kind of in the way though, and it was a good sized birch, so we decided to cut it up for firewood. Doing that without a chain saw is hard work, and I wouldn't have blamed someone who neglected to do that part because of lack of chain saw. But we enjoyed doing things the hard way sometimes, so we worked away at it the next day. One of the bow saws was big enough for two people to use it, so we would get on either side of the tree and one would push while the other pulled, and vice versa. Towards midday it was getting pretty hot and I took my shirt off. She remarked that it was sometimes annoying that guys were free to take their shirts off pretty much whenever they felt like it, but it was unacceptable for her to do the same. I told her that out in the middle of the woods, it was perfectly acceptable to me for her to take her shirt off. She said it probably wouldn't be a good idea in case someone showed up there. I told her that I was sure no one would show up, and she could take her shirt off if she wanted. She didn't seem quite convinced. I reminded her that we had put the cable back up across end of road, and it was padlocked in place.
She seemed marginally convinced, and finally took her shirt off, much to my satisfaction. To be cutting firewood with my girlfriend in the north woods, without our shirts on, had to be one of the finest experiences in my life. We were both sweating by then, and resumed the push, pull, push, pull of the bow saw with renewed vigor. We were making pretty good progress and probably had three fourths of the tree cut and stacked by mid afternoon.
We had the tree partly up on an old sawhorse someone had left there and were about to saw another log off when I heard a strange sort of thumping noise. It was pretty far away and indistinct, but I wondered what it was. A minute later, I could tell it was coming from somewhere out towards the road, and as it got clearer, it seemed more like a chugging. She heard it too, and we both stood there staring down the dirt track towards the road. I walked a little ways towards the cabin so I could see further down the track, and I recognized the sound as the putt putt putt of an old tractor engine just as I saw an old tractor rolling down the track. I felt a panicky feeling and told my girlfriend that someone was coming. She gave me a little scowl as she quickly went to get her shirt which was still lying on the grass. She was just finishing putting it on as the tractor came around by the cabin.
I recognized the old guy on the tractor as Bill Darlek, my grandad's friend who used to come by and chat and have a beer sometimes when we were hunting there. He was a local farmer, and kind of looked after the place. It turns out he was paid to come with his tractor and mow the old logging roads once or twice a year, and he was there to do just that. And that's why he had a key to the padlock on the cable at the end of the road. He set the mower down and drove off towards the dam and the logging roads, and we got back to sawing firewood.
My girlfriend kept her shirt on, and after we finished cutting the next piece of wood from the tree, I put mine back on too.
"No one will be coming, eh?"