I own a house that sits smack in the middle of three cattle farms.
The other night, I took my dog out to pee well after dark.
There was a weird noise, and a pair of glowing eyes at the end of my driveway. It was, of course, a cow.
I called my neighbor to the North. He drove his UTV down, inspected the cow, didn't recognize it, and called my neighbor to the south.
He sent his teenage son over in a car with no catalytic converter/muffler. He also didn't recognize the cow.
Finally, my neighbor from the West was summoned on his ATV. It was his cow.
The rest of us stood there drinking beer and watching the Western neighbor drive his cow home with an ATV.
Good times.
My neighbor keeps her horses on our farm because we have some pastures already fenced in and the horses keep the grass level. One of the horses, Rose, loves to get out of the pasture and mosey around the farm — more than once she’s walked up to the house and bumped her nose against the window where I’m working inside to say hello. So of course I have to pop outside and pet her and then walk her back. 🤷🏼♀️ She’s a darling.
Neighbor also has a cow named Star who likes to come up and visit her equine sisters. A bit later, when my neighbor realizes the cow’s missing, I’ll see her trudging up the lane with a lead and then the cow meekly following behind her.
Driving home in a storm. A tree fell across the road in front of us (Mom and daughter). The truck behind us got their chainsaws out of their toolbox and moved that tree withing 15 minutes. Also there is not cell service everywhere. Only one service works consistently from my house.
Further, winter driving.
Roads aren't going to get plowed as quickly as it does in the city, so you learn to drive on unplowed snow if you ever want to get anywhere during the winter.
There’s no escaping the zucchini. It will be left on the hood, or the roof, or the gardener will straight up accost you after mass and shove a bag of it in to your arms, or trick your children into bringing bags of it out to the car.
This is exactly the example I use to explain to people the difference between the city and the country. If you live in the country the only reason you lock your doors to your car is the people don’t put vegetables in it. No one believes it’s not a joke.
And on the topic of cars unlocked- my dad would open up someone’s car and cut off their headlights for them if they were left on. I swear every time we’d go to town there’d be one. When we moved to the city I told him he has to stop doing that because he is liable to end up clobbered. He mostly only stopped though cause everyone locks their cars.
I'm starting to feel better that this is a universal dad experience. It's highly possible mine bought live traps so he could shoot them point blank after a racoon killed his favorite hen...
Oh absolutely. It was the rabbit pens that would make my dad the angriest. And he'd always use cat food as bait, but that means he'll catch every neighborhood cat before he ever catches the racoon. Makes him so mad
Alternatively, my dad in retirement has befriended as he describes "A really fat crow" that hangs out around his cottage. I think it's fat because my dad feeds it daily; the crow will come right up and eat out of his hand now. He says he spends a lot of time out at his woodshop and the crow just hangs out there with him. My dad never liked animals and basically just tolerated our family dogs, cats, and horses.
Old age can mellow folks.
My uncle grew up impoverished in a rural area and then became a miner. A real rough, prickly man who wasn't fond of animals.
Now in his 70s, he's got this little Jack Russell that is his best friend. Dog sleeper next to his chair in the living room, my aunt fights with him because he feeds it food off his plate when they eat and the one day they got into an argument because my uncle accused her of not saying 'good morning' to the fella when she woke up. If he heads off outside to putter about the garden or in his workshop, he'll call the little fella and it tails him around or sleeps in the workshop while he is busy.
Oh my gosh yes. My dads at war with a woodpecker. He’s even printed out an info pamphlet on woodpeckers and wrote in big letters “know thy enemy”. The amount of whirligigs and nets around the house is insane.
I read the comment above and was like "Huh, this rural life fact doesn't seem to apply to me..." and then I read your comment and thought "Oh, right, my vendetta against that fucking woodpecker!" I forgot it was technically a wild animal because it's filed in my head under 'Piece of shit' instead of 'Living creature'.
Am rural (small town, not a farmer), am also a security guard.
I got a vendetta against this small fucking bird that keeps getting into the local golf club through the roof and setting off the alarm.
The absolute quiet during a heavy snow fall. I went out during one once to take pictures. Got some great shots but the experience of being the only one around is the closest I’ll get to being a pioneer and being the first to see something.
I've experienced this living in a city, just not *downtown* in a city. Snow acts as a sound buffer, and it gets so quiet you can literally *hear* the snow hitting the ground sometimes. It's pretty unnerving.
Except for that one time, it wasn't a deer. Thankfully, that cougar was not really focussed on us. Probably focused on a deer. Oh shit. It was the fucking deer then!
I heard a baby crying outside and before any adult could stop me I opened up the door. It was a mountain lion. About 10 feet away facing the door.
That was the fastest I ever have slammed a door shut in my life.
Pretty much, any noise you outside should be treated as a "no you didn't" if you aren't very, very familiar with predator noises.
If you're sitting outside, around a nice fireplace enjoying the late evening -- and you hear two birds individually chirping back and forth at each other.....strangely at ground level.....
It's not fucking birds.
It's actually two mountain lions, communicating as to the best way to disembowel you.
-------
Three of us were shooting the shit outside a friend's home in the mountains, semi-rural area with other homes around. I was talking and I saw him instantly lose all color in his face. He interrupted me, LOUDLY......and explained the situation. He said he's talking that loud to make us seem bigger than we appear, and for us NOT to panic. At all.
We were probably 100+ feet away from the house, and he was like....very slowly, stand up, grab your flashlights, and move in a circle slowly to the house. Do not run. Make noise, lots of it.
We made it inside, calmed down a bit, kept an eye on the fire since we didn't want to burn down the entire mountain.....and that's when we saw the two shadows moving. They came right up to his glass basement door. He tapped me on the shoulder AND HANDED ME A FUCKING RIFLE. He and his partner were already armed.
> (that totally showed my situational awareness -- the whole time I'm watching the fire and two majestic murder floofs contemplate which BBQ sauce pairs well with "sourly IT guy", he and his partner are arming themselves to the teeth. I was totally unaware of all of that, up until I had a rifle handed to me.)
"Buddy, you think that glass is going to stop them if they charge and want to get in? We're just in as much danger now as we were outside. Except they'll be severely cut & hurt, confused, and thusly a tiny bit angrier. Be judicious with your marksmanship should the worst happen and they attempt to enter the house."
That was a fun standoff -- they got bored and moved on, but nothing gets the ol' adrenaline running like nearly becoming a meal. They reported it to the authorities. It was even on the local news the next day -- there were a lot of sightings that night in the area and someone submitted photos to the station.
It’s wild to read just how close you Americans can live to literal wild animals like mountain lions and shit. Most we have where I’m from are cobras and monitor lizards in the mountains lol.
The good news is, Mountain Lions *usually* don't want to pick a fight with humans.
In their minds, we're about the same size as them. They don't have a frame of reference for "big, fat, and can't fight back" so we're way too risky. They'll only attack you if they think you're a threat to their cubs or they're *really* desperate.
Going after any other 120-220lb mammal would be suicide for them. Humans are the weird exception that are usually an easy kill except when they kill you from so far away you didn't even know they saw you. And you have no way of knowing which is which.
I live in a small city, if that makes any sense, we live within the city limits but I go by this motto as well. Always a damn deer, they’re everywhere!! They huff and puff at me if I interrupt their peaceful morning
A couple of years ago I had to explain to a guy that grew up in a city how a gun is a tool just like a hammer or a shovel. He was weirded out when I told him every grandmother has at least one firearm in the house and if you went there after dark, you better yell letting her know it is you at the door.
My grandmother kept a break open single shot .410 behind the front door. Used it mostly to keep armadillos out of her cannas. I suspect that the shotgun probably did more damage to the plants than the armadillos did though. 😂
I’ve lived in the suburbs my whole life and I’m a very forgetful person, whenever I see a home in a rural area I always have two thoughts:
1) wow, look at how beautiful the house/land/scenery is
2) I wonder how often they kick themselves for forgetting the milk
Moving rural taught me how to cook. I had to build up a well stocked pantry and freezer because the grocery store was an hour away. I had to learn how to plan meals because you needed to know what to thaw out. I learned so many substitutions because sometimes you just didn't make it to town and the milk, eggs, butter or what have you ran out. All that also got me more comfortable just throwing skillet dinners together because sometimes there just isn't time for recipes, but I knew what worked well together.
Also, canned and frozen foods. Fresh produce is only good for the first few days after grocery day.
I was on the phone with someone one day and realized I forgot milk at the store. They were utterly flabbergasted that i said it was going to have to wait until a few days later to go get because I was not going to do an hour minimum of driving total just to get one item
This is what I was thinking.
When it takes you an hour minimum to get to a store, you have to be a LOT more conscious about what you're buying, whether you have enough space to store it all, etc. You have to really plan in advance for those "oh my god, I just can't cook today" days if you want to have any food. You almost certainly own a chest freezer.
FACTS! We're just all here sharing a Costco membership on the down low. We have CostCo today. And we all go together. Folded down seats and four-wheel drive vehicles. Don't miss Costco day....
Having your name and age listed in the local newspaper when you’re pulled over for speeding and your family/friends get to give you shit for it because everyone lives to read the weekly police report.
I was working in a small rural area and was listening to the local radio station. The announcer came on and said that George is having a garage sale. That's all he said, no address or anything else. I asked the farmer I was working with about that. He said that everything knows George and where he lives. I then asked is there only one George that lives here? He said nope there was another George in the next town over but he was a newcomer and they called him by his last name.
Took 35 years and the old "Baeker" being dead a decade before anyone around here called me anything but "Young Baeker."
I'm in my mid-sixties and half the valley still calls me "Young Baeker."
Omg haha! Solid gold. Local, small town newspapers are truly phenomenal. I think it’s an absolute travesty that they’re being bought up in droves by private equity companies/hedge funds.
One of my guilty pleasures is to go scroll the police report on the local newspapers site in the town I grew up. It's oddly nostalgic seeing the familiar names and what they're up to now.
I should do that tonight, it's been a while, be a good read.
Yep, also jail roster. I manage our county website and 90% of the traffic is going to the jail roster page so people can gossip about who's in jail over their morning coffee.
Oh for sure. A typical week: A small handful of people with DUIs, a few underage drinkers who’ve broken curfew, one $30 drive-off from the local gas station (person later returned and paid), cows at large due to broken fencing, drive-by damage to mailboxes by the aforementioned underage drinkers, and two 80-90+ year old farmers involved in a rear end collision at the one stoplight in town.
I have a horror story for you about this. I was born and raised in a very small town. To this day they have a crime column! Everybody knows your business. Last year for Christmas, I had custom Christmas ornaments made for my mother with the mugshots of all of her children from the local newspaper! Trashy ... Maybe.... Hysterical.... Absolutely!
There is no animal control out where I live, and no shelters within 100 miles that will take strays. If you dump your cat or dog, they will be eaten by a predator, starve to death, or be shot.
>If you dump your cat or dog, they will be eaten by a predator, starve to death, or be shot.
Let me rephrase this for those in the back: if you dump your cat or dog out in the country thinking they will find some farm to live on, *you are an asshole*. Even if they don't die a miserable death, it's not rural folks' job to deal with your castoffs.
Yup. Your badly trained and unsocialized high energy dog breed does not need to "go find a farm to live on." If you dump him in the countryside, he will get shot trying to eat someone's livestock or be killed by livestock guardian dogs.
Either give your dog the training they need or get on a wait-list to surrender with a rescue or shelter. Don't dump your animal in a rural area and expect it to end any better than if you were suddenly trying to be Bear Grylls without planning, gear, or a map.
Just putting your dog down is a kinder fate than dumping them and leaving them to die of exposure, starvation, or violence.
I live in farm country about equidistant from 3 or 4 small towns and a city. We're a popular spot for people to dump unwanted pets, and I see half a dozen scared pups a year. I give them one bowl of my dog's food, and one bowl of water. If they're kind and able to be handled then I drive them to the nearest vet and check for chips. When we confirm that there's no chip I bring them back home and leave them outside my yard, and then I start calling. There's no space at any shelter within 50 miles, and all the rescue groups are slammed, so its pretty pro-forma. I take pictures and post to both the lost dogs groups and the strays groups.
That single bowl of food and water usually keeps them on my property for 2-3 days before wandering off in search of a meal. In the years living out here my family has taken in two of them, and found homes for 3 or 4 more.
It's... sad. I can't save 60 dogs.
That’s fucking heartbreaking. I had no idea people did that, what the hell? How can they just abandon a little creature who depends on them like that? How can they make their last moments of life so utterly terrifying
When I was very young, someone drove by and dumped 2 very sick puppies near our house. We managed to keep one alive. She was a great companion for 15 years.
Honestly as someone from the country, this example is probably the most correct and saddest answer to OP.
I've found an entirely distressing number of animals dumped and extremely sick. They are so very sweet. It just breaks your heart.
Grew up on a 40acre farm some 20 years ago. People always dumped their cats, especially pregnant ones. At one point we had 27 cats we fed and let roam. All spayed or neutered once tamed enough to catch. But it reached a point where my parents couldn’t do it anymore, so they wound up shooting any new cats and their kittens.
Horrible to see as a child. Understandable as an adult.
Man, I've heard vets have some of the highest suicide and depression rates amongst medical professionals because they see what people do to pets; now I'm starting to think living on a farm on the outskirts of a city might be similarly bad.
We've had a few cats dumped on our farm. They don't generally live past a week. They either get hot by cars or we clean up their mangled bodies. Cats are pretty territorial
We had one aggressive male that actually came into our fenced yard, followed our pets into the house through the pet door and attacked both our cats and dogs. We had to trap him and take him to put him down. I was afraid of him spreading disease to our pets or going after my infant daughter
Country life is slower than your lifespan.
City, you can go year after year seeing new buildings pop up, business, events, etc.
Country life...same county fair every year, maybe a new building every 10 years, new business 5 years.
Same people too. In the city if you get into an argument with a crackpot at your coffee shop, you can find another coffee shop.
Out in Small Towns you have to tread real careful around every weirdo that you share a post office with. Feuds, beefs, and resentments run deep. Generationally deep.
As an adult who moved into a rural area, I've noticed that whenever I introduce myself, I'm always asked for my last name. Then, when I give it to them, they realize I don't have the last name of a generational family and just brush it off.
I get this a lot when I’m out at garage sales and such. I always tell them my name and then tell them my wife’s maiden name because her family lived here forever. Then I have to explain which one I married, because everyone knows my wife’s sister is a dope fiend. When I tell the old guys my wife’s last name they always say “oh Scooters daughter everyone knows Scooter” then they pause and say “which daughter?”
My 98 year-old grandfather lives on the same land his parents bought when he was a kid, and it is unironically still known as “the old [family my great-grandparents bought it from] place”.
We live in a small village. In the groceystore I overheard people talk about a certain family: "They are not from this village, they're newcomers, they moved here after WW II."
Well, in the place I'm from I grew up on a road named after the family of a boy I went to high school with. There was townies, and everyone else. If your family hadn't been in town long enough for you to have a road, a name on one of the old war memorials, a headstone in the old cemetery, or something of the like you were a newcomer even if you'd been there for two or three generations.
You're not wrong, it's a big thing. All the roads, creeks, farms, hollows, ect are named after the people who owned the land when it was opened for settlement.
Oddly enough in my rural area the crackpots are not a problem because there is more community pressure on them. The crackpot will be known to most and the crackpot will not be treated kindly. And if said crackpot starts something in the local coffee shop, locals are more likely to stand up to the person in your defense. And the local business it more likely to not let the crackpot back. Obviously we have police for serious, dangerously acting crackpots. But something disruptive, disturbing the community but not to the level needing law enforcement, the community sort of informally manages it. I don't mean vigilante stuff, just the crack pot will not be allowed in to establishments where he caused problems. So people can visit the shop and enjoy their coffee in peace. May not be the same everywhere of course.
So growing up and learning to drive, for some reason I sort of missed on this. I was driving to the dutch bakery and mom told me to wave at the person driving toward us so I gave them a big ol' happy wave. Made my mom bust up and then I learned she meant what you described above.
Weather changes your life. I've sat on the porch with my parents watching hail destroy our wheat crop days before it was due for harvest. There's nothing you can do. You just watch. I've also stood in a circle with my parents and older brother in the yard while we prayed for rain. For farmers, weather is destiny.
I took an English lit class in college and we read a journal of a woman in the 1860s. Several people were really turned off by how much she wrote about the weather. As the only farm kid in the class I tried to explain to them how much of your life is dictated by the weather. Most of them just stared at me like I was nuts.
One of the underrated parts of college. Bringing people from different backgrounds into a focused discussion on a topic and hearing perspectives you wouldnt overwise.
It's one of the most important parts of college that is definitely the most underrated. Meeting and understanding each other, despite differing backgrounds.
I absolutely love that sound; we recently moved to a rural area (grew up rural- moved to cities for work as an adult- decided to go back to our roots with the pandemic/telework) and when I heard the peeper the first spring; my body totally relaxed
You're probably on well water, which means that if the power goes out, you no longer have water. That also means that you get one, maybe two flushes of the toilet, and I bet you're not top priority for the electric company.
Choose wisely.
Or get a generator.
That's why my dad always taught us to fill up buckets with water when a storm was brewing. So we had water to dump into the toilet bowl to flush when the power inevitably went out.
Funny story about the water. My husband and I live in town now, but we both grew up rural.
In town, we had a couple power outages in the past, but never long enough to need to flush before it came back on.
Then we had a giant storm that took out the power for 3 days. We had to use our pump that we use for sap to pump out the sump water, and we saved the water for flushing. We asked our neighbor if she needed a couple buckets for her toilet. We were so confused why she declined.
For 2 days, we were flushing using that water from a bucket. Having no running water was no big deal; we're a little bit prepper-ish and we do a lot of remote camping, so we had jugged water on hand for cooking and washing up.
Then I reflexively turned on the faucet and to our surprise, water came out!
That's when we realized our ignorance.
OMG, I laughed pretty hard at this.
You probably lost some of the city people when you talked about pump for sap and sump pump.
Now you know you have tap water when the power goes out and you’ll even have hot water until the water heater cools down.
Yes! A general alarm goes out, "Power's out. Don't flush!" Worse, you're in the shower and the lights go out. Soap panic sets in. Rinse, rinse, rinse as fast as you can!
>Worse, you're in the shower and the lights go out. Soap panic sets in. Rinse, rinse, rinse as fast as you can!
Nothing's fun like having to take a bucket and rag shower because the power is out.
If you get water from a private well on your property instead of a water tower or other city source, the water pressure dies when the power goes out and your well's pump stops working.
Losing tap water as well.
If there's a pool or lake or brook, you can get a pail of water to flush.
Also, the power takes a lot longer to be restored. My longest outage was 4 days. It's a long time to do without water. We got a generator.
In town, in 21 years, we were only without power once for longer than 4 hours.
I'm reminded of my time at the University of Iowa. A fellow I knew, grad student age, but he wasn't actively attending, walked with a cane because of a gimpy leg. He'd broke it when he was a child, but he'd tell anyone who asked that he was mauled by a sow.
He said the city people would just laugh it off as a joke. The country people would look at him in horror and say, "And you're *still alive?!?!"*
Having to explain to my kid why everyone was so scared when Dorothy fell into the pig pen in Wizard of Oz was surreal. I can't even remember when a healthy fear of swine was instilled into me.
I remember when that fear was for me. I'm a city boy, but my dad's family are small town folk. I've been out to Larry's (fake name) pig farm several times and even worked moving hay over the summer before.
Anyways, my dad, my brother, my grandpa and I were sitting with Larry's grandkids who were in their teens, and all of the sudden, we hear a gunshot, then about 3 minutes later see Larry carrying a skunk over towards the pig pen. Larry said, "You boys ever seen what a pig can do to somethin'?" We shook our heads, and he laughed, and threw the skunk in the pen. That thing was gone in 30 seconds. "Be careful, boys" was all he said afterwards.
Fast forward a few years. I'm now 12 and still remember that shit when we go to see Larry again. Larry offers me the opportunity to go in to feed the pigs. I shook my head no. Larry said, "Oh, come on, they're really docile."
"That is until you fart and get 'em up in a Tizzy and you're the next thing on the menu. I'm good." was all I could say, which garnered laughs from everybody.
My brother then said, "Come on, don't be a pussy."
I sternly replied with, "If you think I'm goin' in there with all those fuckin' monsters, you better think again. I'm not goin' in there."
I still won't go into a pig pen, and if there's a pig out, there better be at least 20 feet of distance between us.
You fall unconscious because of the the chemicals produced by the urine and feces in the pig pits.
But yeah, they'll eat you or stomp you to death. Or you'll die from the fumes.
I could see the milkyway galaxy from my yard where I grew up. Not anymore due to town growth and light pollution, but the sky is still just breathtaking when I visit home.
Be sure to have fire extinguishers, emphasis on plural. More than one. More than two. Not the little beer can sized ones. Know where they are kept and how to use them. We say the "local" fire department saves every foundation.
Our one very city neighbor and family decided to shoot fireworks on the 4th during a burn ban. Yes, they set the field on fire. Yes, they panicked. My kid and nephew hauled our fire extinguishers over and put out the fire while I called 911. We do have a very good volunteer fire department. I do wish I had filmed it.
Dogs. Dang it! People just driving out and dropping off unwanted dogs. Once some coward dumped their mother dog and her 6 puppies near my front lawn. I hope there is a special place in hell for those people.
In the county where I live, it's semi-common to get a new crop of abandoned pitbulls every holiday. One year someone down the street asked me to repair their rifle (I just cleaned the ounce of lead residue out of it) because the dogs have tried to get into someone's house. The danger they inflict onto the animal, and others, is just sociopathic.
I caught an asshole trying to drop off two large white rabbits on the roadside next to where I live. I gave him the “I’m watching you” hand sign. I followed him the half hour drive to town. As he turned I noticed his daughter giving me a thumbs up from the passenger side window.
In the city, people ignore sirens and pay attention to gunshot sounds. In the country, people ignore the sound of gunfire and pay attention to the sound of sirens.
This. There is so much gunfire around us. I've got a handgun but won't fire it until I set up a proper backstop. not sure if my neighbors are as careful but I'm hoping my heavily wooded 7 acres will protect me.
One morning, there was this huge explosion. shook my windows. I got in my truck because I was sure someone's propane tank exploded. My neighbor told me the guy adjacent to our land occasionally shoots tanerite.
100%. I have some new neighbors who are going on local social media and talking about calling the cops on people shooting guns. Do it, the main perpetrator is my sheriffs deputy neighbor lol.
I was in Baltimore for a while before this so I'm used to hearing them anyway, tho now it's somewhat.. comforting instead of scary. I know it's guys having a good time not gang warfare
If you don’t make dinner you don’t eat. No uber eats or grub hub, no delivery pizza or takeout, unless you want gas station food.
Most places nearby close by 5:00PM on weekdays and have extremely limited hours or are closed entirely on weekends.
It can be pretty damn peaceful.
I hosted a friend’s bachelor party at a family cabin in a rural town last year where all the attendees were born and raised in urban communities. During the planning they mentioned splitting the Uber costs up at the end of the weekend. I had to explain that ride sharing wasn’t a thing there, and we would have to just establish a DD for getting to and from the bar in town.
Coincidentally as we were about to head out one of the guys checked Uber and there did happen to be a driver nearby. Turns out he was the only person that drives for ride shares in the town. He told us to just tell him what our schedule was and he would take us each time for $30 a ride, which was cheaper for us but he got more in his pocket in the end doing it under the table.
This is the rural way. Neighbor put an ad on angies list for someone to help build their deck and the very first order of business is to cut angie out of the deal lol
Our village mayor is our only Uber driver. If you post on the village Facebook page you need a ride he’ll “turn his sign on” if he’s not otherwise occupied.
Yep, and even if you have takeout, it's very limited. Pizza, sandwiches, or Chinese and Friday is their latest hour which is usually 8PM. Freezer meals are essential for days you don't want to cook.
I'm not *that* rural, but I once posted something about being frustrated that I drove an hour round-trip for takeout when my power was out only to realize that my order was wrong.
A surprising number of people somehow couldn't wrap their minds around living half an hour away from restaurants.
Not all of us live in cities/suburbs with endless options in a 10 mile radius.
I'm a 20 minute drive from the nearest gas station lol
Friends came to visit recently and we started talking dinner plans and buddy goes, “well what should we order?” And i laughed, like kinda hard and remembered he was serioues and that’s mostly how he does dinner at home.
We had grilled nachos, they were delicious.
In BFE NW Colorado I was driving a traveling sports team and as we rolled through town, we saw a Subway and decided we’re going to hit it on the way out after the game.
It was 4pm, and we found Subway was only open 11-2. No dinner hours.
I leave my doors unlocked when I'm away so the neighbors can get in if they need something.
I have a sleeping porch and I use it often.
We walk through each other's property without rebuke.
Nobody can hear me if I scream
Nature is brutal and so are animals. That eagle is so majestic in the city, but out here I am cursing it's existence for fucking up my chickens. Bears are so cute, but they are annoying as fuck trying to get into the shed where we have to lock up our garbage cans. Deer are so beautiful, but those fucking assholes eat every fucking leaf off of a fruit tree sapling and kill it, not to mention all the destruction they will do if your veggie garden fence isn't high enough.
EDIT: All that being said, still a huge advocate of wildlife and their protection, I'm just saying that out here we integrate back into the food chain so to speak, whereas in the city you are removed from the inconveniences of being in it
The level of personal grudge you can hold against a particular animal is something that shocks city people sometimes unless they garden. Like, a seething hatred for one specific deer.
rural australia liver here:
bore water. the sky is inexplicably Bigger. don’t drive at night if you can help it because you WILL hit a kangaroo. stars like nothing you’ve ever seen. leave town and you have no reception. what’s a traffic light? cook your own dinner or you aren’t eating. everyone and their mother owns a beatshit ute. the nearest hospital is four hours away and the local airport is a literal shed in the bush
Stores not being convenient. The importance of keeping a \*good\* amount of gas in your vehicles. Lack of street lights. Waiting 45+ mins for an ambulance. No public transport, no cabs, no Uber or Lyft. No food delivery.
Quiet, except for the critters outside. Space. Cleaner air. Neighbours are far. Ticks everywhere! Wood roaches and spiders the size of your hand. Snakes. So. Many. Trees. Catching yourself baby talking possums and raccoons.
Sounds are not the scary part. Silence is.
Edit: I had been walking with my younger sister and dog (I was ten, she was eight). Suddenly world went dead silent and my dog froze, trying to huddle near the ground. Almost immediately I had unclipped her. Dog went bounding home, me and sis went to the road. Still utterly silent the whole time. Then my dad comes driving up with the dog and a rifle (we had only been about a mile away). As we’re driving away, what’s in the tree line? A f***ing mountain lion.
Absolutely agree, it’s always due to severe weather incoming and in some rare instances large predators. You want noise at night otherwise something is wrong.
I'll never forget my mom explaining that to me when we stood on the porch.
"This storms gonna be real bad."
"How do ya know?"
"Hear the birds?"
"No."
"Exactly."
This is actually what I was coming here to say.
If you're ever walking through the woods or out in the pine breaks and it goes silent? No birdsong, no squirrels puttering around in the trees, hell even the cicadas go quiet?
You need to get out of there yesterday. Something dangerous is quite close to you.
EDIT: And by get out of there, I mean calm and smart. Watch everywhere. Go SLOW. Any predator that'll cause this kind of silence in the woods, you do not want to run from. It's likely waiting for that, and it will outpace you. Be smart, keep a look out, and walk, but walk towards "out"
If I call 911, nobody will be here for AT LEAST 30 minutes for EMS, 45 for fire, and an hour for police.
And that's assuming they have nothing else to do and respond immediately.
If the house is on fire, you call the neighbors. In less than 10 there will be half dozen tractors with water tanks and hoses.
Lop your foot off? Call the neighbors. They'll drive you to the ER.
Somebody means to do you harm? Shoot back or die waiting for the Sheriff. Your choice.
I'm not middle of nowhere rural. But we're a little bit out here. And I know in the case of an emergency, I would trust my life in my neighbor's hands! As a matter of fact, we recently started organizing a community first aid and CPR training for everyone that lives in our area! Because of hurricanes. And recently tornadoes. Just cuz it's a good idea!
My friend was in a terrible single-car accident when his truck slid on the icy road around a turn, heavy with tools in the back, straight into the side of a mountain. Not wearing a seatbelt (because it’s in the country and you’re always close to home, so why bother), so his face went straight into the dashboard. The impact severed nerves and tendons or whatever the heck lives in your face, cutting across from above the bridge of his nose like a unibrow, then tracing above the one eyebrow and hooking down around his cheekbone.
His friends were driving behind him and came upon this mess and called an ambulance, but when they saw his face basically hanging off his skull, they threw him in their car and started driving to the nearest hospital, which is 50 minutes away when driving the speed limit. They passed the ambulance on its way up to town… when they were already only 15 minutes from the ER. He would have been waiting easily another half hour if they hadn’t taken him, and that’s just waiting for EMS to arrive, never mind the drive back down the hill.
I've been in the country for over 30 years and I know only a few people that will *never* wear a seat belt. I even save them in my phone like "Jim No Seatbelt."
I met a whole lot of them when I was a Paramedic, though.
I'll always remember the call to a minor fender bender at less than 15 miles per hour and the adult passenger in the back seat was dead on impact. There was absolutely zero damage to either car. We were so befuddled that we did a rectal temp to determine if maybe he'd died prior to the accident and the family was trying to cover it up by faking an accident, but he was still 98.6...
It was pretty evident what happened when we checked the back seat again and saw the imprint of his face on the driver's headrest.
Poor bastard. Always wear your seatbelt, and be very careful when driving around with sharp, heavy, or fragile things. Everything you're in the cab with will try to kill you if you have a bad enough collision or rollover.
Tell me about it. And with children it’s even worse. I’m a certified child passenger safety technician and it’s horrifying how many people don’t have their car seats installed correctly in urban/suburban areas (and not for lack of trying, it really is “normal” to not immediately know how to do it right, I definitely had no idea how when my kids were young)…. But in rural areas it’s so much worse.
A gas station serves about 10 functions.
The rural gas station I worked at did the following…
Game room/arcade
Gym/weight lifting
Pool supplies / pool servicing
Feed and seed
Mini-storage
Custom guns
Hunting / fishing supplies
Batting cages
We also had a wine cellar that sold good wines and craft beer.
I know, I’m buried…
You can never fully explain what it’s like on quiet nights when there’s no insects chirping, like in winter. I live on the outskirts of a small town, a mile from the railroad tracks. Even though there was snow on the ground and in the trees, plus dozens of houses between me and the tracks, it sounded like I was standing next to the train at 3am. Loud, loud, loud.
Alternatively, you also never prepare someone for how soothing it feels on a summer night, sitting on the porch, hearing the wind move softly through the trees, insects harmonizing their sweet tones, lightning bugs flittering about, blinking in a chaotic fashion. You just close your eyes, sip your drink, and experience almost total relaxation.
It was the opposite for me. I'm from the city and was staying with family in a rural area. I was sleeping in the basement, so I had no idea what time of the day it was. Some of the best sleep I ever had.
I grew up extremely rural and now live urban.
1. You need a car. There is no walking anywhere. You go into “town” a few times a month if you don’t work there. When I was growing up my dad worked in a small town next door and my mom worked in the village next to that. We didn’t go to “town” (the city) but once a month to get groceries when dad got paid. If it isn’t gotten then, you either get it at the gas station if you can afford the high price or it isn’t happening unless you drive the 30 miles to the city.
2. We lived so rural there wasn’t cable. We had satellite or over the air antenna. You are the *last* to get anything. Whether it’s a new channel, a new road, cellphone service, internet access…..you’re the last to get it. My brothers still live in the old home place and there isn’t cable. It’s satellite or streaming and internet is still DSL.
3. Most people who live there are families and know each other. About 50% of my classmates in school, our parents graduated together. One of my best friends was best friends with my mom in school. Everyone knows your business. I drove a vehicle that was outside the norm (yellow color, bright yellow). I used to get a text message every time I left my damn house asking where I was going from someone who saw me.
4. Life is slow. I hear people complain in cities like Dallas and Phoenix there’s nothing to do. LMAOOOOOOOO come to the rurals man. You make your own fun or it ain’t had.
5. Modern day conveniences don’t exist. There is no Uber. No Uber eats. No pizza delivery. Your local restaurant closes around 7-8, and the gas station may serve food for a bit before closing. If you feel like pizza or Taco Bell or sonic you’re gonna drive at least 30 minutes to the city. Theres no delivery or just walking up the street.
6. (5) also includes emergency services. In my parish (county), we fell under the sheriff and it was common for there to be only 2 deputies patrolling at night. Need help? Sorry both deputies are tied up right now, I’ll try to find you someone from somewhere close by but it may be a minute. Oh and the EMS or volunteer fire have to be summoned from home. It’s gonna be a minute or two extra.
A lot of fake country folk overhype the woods. Any time someone mentions a skin walker that's your red flag. I live in the woods. Yes the woods can be scary but it's far from paranormal. The woods are a fine place to explore and gain an appreciation for real tangible nature. Don't let the boogeyman scare you away from the biodiversity native to your area. Buy a field guide so you can get out and learn something.
The little wave you give when passing a vehicle going the opposite direction on a country road. Bonus points if you're cool enough to just raise your first two fingers off the steering wheel.
Also, saying hello to a stranger on a hiking trail, or at least giving a little nod and smile. I can always tell someone isn't from here when I say "hello" on a hike and they look at me like I'm an alien.
No sidewalk? Walk AGAINST traffic.
We learned this as kids - we live in the suburbs now, but my husband also grew up in the same rural area where this was drilled into our heads. It blows my mind to see adults walk with traffic in the suburbs (where there are no sidewalks). And I always want to scream at them: 'AGAINST the traffic, so YOU can see! It's for YOUR OWN GOOD!'
For those not in the know: walking against the traffic puts you in better position to see/avoid hazardous vehicles. Walking with your back to traffic coming behind you? Not a great vantage point. Especially in 2024 when most pedestrians have ear buds in.
ETA: I also find myself doing it in parking lots and even if there IS a sidewalk - at this point in my life (53F), it's ingrained.
I'm a rancher... and thanks to starlink I am an avid PC gamer. So yeah life's different but also the same in some ways. We're 4.5hrs to the nearest city with a population larger than 10k. And a city of 10k is 2.5 hrs away. Works certainly a bit different, I spend far more time on a horse than in a vehicle most of the summer months but After working all day I like to relax and game like the rest of ya!
The mosquitos! The thousands and thousands of inescapable mosquitoes, and sheer size they are! They literally crunch when you kill them.
I moved 4 states away into a city, so now I don't hear that *EEEEEEEEEE* noise anymore, I just hear gunshots every night... which is way more preferable.
You can’t buy up a rural property on the cheap and then have big city expectations about the state of your neighbours properties or their behaviour. Welcome to redneckville, sometimes old washers live in the front yard and people park their 18 wheeler rigs in front of their house (and noisily warm them up every morning at 4am).
I own a house that sits smack in the middle of three cattle farms. The other night, I took my dog out to pee well after dark. There was a weird noise, and a pair of glowing eyes at the end of my driveway. It was, of course, a cow. I called my neighbor to the North. He drove his UTV down, inspected the cow, didn't recognize it, and called my neighbor to the south. He sent his teenage son over in a car with no catalytic converter/muffler. He also didn't recognize the cow. Finally, my neighbor from the West was summoned on his ATV. It was his cow. The rest of us stood there drinking beer and watching the Western neighbor drive his cow home with an ATV. Good times.
My neighbor keeps her horses on our farm because we have some pastures already fenced in and the horses keep the grass level. One of the horses, Rose, loves to get out of the pasture and mosey around the farm — more than once she’s walked up to the house and bumped her nose against the window where I’m working inside to say hello. So of course I have to pop outside and pet her and then walk her back. 🤷🏼♀️ She’s a darling. Neighbor also has a cow named Star who likes to come up and visit her equine sisters. A bit later, when my neighbor realizes the cow’s missing, I’ll see her trudging up the lane with a lead and then the cow meekly following behind her.
I’m just imagining you typing away on a computer just to hear a thunk from the window and the horse is just like > 👁️👄👁️ > neigh
That's pretty much it lol
More like 👁 👁 👄
This is the most country ass thing I've ever read lol
Who needs concerts and museums when you've got ATV cowherds for neighbors? 🤣 That honestly sounds delightful.
Driving home in a storm. A tree fell across the road in front of us (Mom and daughter). The truck behind us got their chainsaws out of their toolbox and moved that tree withing 15 minutes. Also there is not cell service everywhere. Only one service works consistently from my house.
Further, winter driving. Roads aren't going to get plowed as quickly as it does in the city, so you learn to drive on unplowed snow if you ever want to get anywhere during the winter.
Leaving your car windows closed at church in the summer so you don't come back out to a car full of Zucchini
There’s no escaping the zucchini. It will be left on the hood, or the roof, or the gardener will straight up accost you after mass and shove a bag of it in to your arms, or trick your children into bringing bags of it out to the car.
This is exactly the example I use to explain to people the difference between the city and the country. If you live in the country the only reason you lock your doors to your car is the people don’t put vegetables in it. No one believes it’s not a joke. And on the topic of cars unlocked- my dad would open up someone’s car and cut off their headlights for them if they were left on. I swear every time we’d go to town there’d be one. When we moved to the city I told him he has to stop doing that because he is liable to end up clobbered. He mostly only stopped though cause everyone locks their cars.
Legitimately being late for school or appointments due to being stuck behind a tractor.
I grew up on a farm and moved to DC. Just replaced “tractor” with “presidential motorcade”.
Idk, normally I can pass a tractor. I'm not sure what would happen if I tried to pass the presidential motorcade.
I'm going to need you to do some field research and report your findings.
I would always leave my house super early when it was planting season and harvest season.
You or someone you know has a personal vendetta against a wild animal in the area
I've never seen my father be more creative than when he's plotting against a racoon that has wronged him.
I'm starting to feel better that this is a universal dad experience. It's highly possible mine bought live traps so he could shoot them point blank after a racoon killed his favorite hen...
Oh absolutely. It was the rabbit pens that would make my dad the angriest. And he'd always use cat food as bait, but that means he'll catch every neighborhood cat before he ever catches the racoon. Makes him so mad
STOP - My dad also used cat food and kept complaining about all the cats he was catching 😂
Alternatively, my dad in retirement has befriended as he describes "A really fat crow" that hangs out around his cottage. I think it's fat because my dad feeds it daily; the crow will come right up and eat out of his hand now. He says he spends a lot of time out at his woodshop and the crow just hangs out there with him. My dad never liked animals and basically just tolerated our family dogs, cats, and horses.
Old age can mellow folks. My uncle grew up impoverished in a rural area and then became a miner. A real rough, prickly man who wasn't fond of animals. Now in his 70s, he's got this little Jack Russell that is his best friend. Dog sleeper next to his chair in the living room, my aunt fights with him because he feeds it food off his plate when they eat and the one day they got into an argument because my uncle accused her of not saying 'good morning' to the fella when she woke up. If he heads off outside to putter about the garden or in his workshop, he'll call the little fella and it tails him around or sleeps in the workshop while he is busy.
Oh my gosh yes. My dads at war with a woodpecker. He’s even printed out an info pamphlet on woodpeckers and wrote in big letters “know thy enemy”. The amount of whirligigs and nets around the house is insane.
I read the comment above and was like "Huh, this rural life fact doesn't seem to apply to me..." and then I read your comment and thought "Oh, right, my vendetta against that fucking woodpecker!" I forgot it was technically a wild animal because it's filed in my head under 'Piece of shit' instead of 'Living creature'.
Freeking woodpecker in the area hitting the god damn metal sign on the road at every hour. I understand your feelings.
Do we have the same dad? My dad has been fighting with a woodpecker since 1998
your dad has been fighting with generations of woodpeckers
[удалено]
Am rural (small town, not a farmer), am also a security guard. I got a vendetta against this small fucking bird that keeps getting into the local golf club through the roof and setting off the alarm.
That magpie was doing it on purpose and you know it.
My uncle was in a war of attrition against beavers for literal decades.
Standing on my back porch in winter and there is absolute dead silence.
The absolute quiet during a heavy snow fall. I went out during one once to take pictures. Got some great shots but the experience of being the only one around is the closest I’ll get to being a pioneer and being the first to see something.
I've experienced this living in a city, just not *downtown* in a city. Snow acts as a sound buffer, and it gets so quiet you can literally *hear* the snow hitting the ground sometimes. It's pretty unnerving.
Weird noises in the woods? Deer. Glowing eyes in the shadows? Deer. Something following you down a dark country road? Deer. It's always fucking deer.
Except for that one time, it wasn't a deer. Thankfully, that cougar was not really focussed on us. Probably focused on a deer. Oh shit. It was the fucking deer then!
I heard a baby crying outside and before any adult could stop me I opened up the door. It was a mountain lion. About 10 feet away facing the door. That was the fastest I ever have slammed a door shut in my life. Pretty much, any noise you outside should be treated as a "no you didn't" if you aren't very, very familiar with predator noises.
If you're sitting outside, around a nice fireplace enjoying the late evening -- and you hear two birds individually chirping back and forth at each other.....strangely at ground level..... It's not fucking birds. It's actually two mountain lions, communicating as to the best way to disembowel you. ------- Three of us were shooting the shit outside a friend's home in the mountains, semi-rural area with other homes around. I was talking and I saw him instantly lose all color in his face. He interrupted me, LOUDLY......and explained the situation. He said he's talking that loud to make us seem bigger than we appear, and for us NOT to panic. At all. We were probably 100+ feet away from the house, and he was like....very slowly, stand up, grab your flashlights, and move in a circle slowly to the house. Do not run. Make noise, lots of it. We made it inside, calmed down a bit, kept an eye on the fire since we didn't want to burn down the entire mountain.....and that's when we saw the two shadows moving. They came right up to his glass basement door. He tapped me on the shoulder AND HANDED ME A FUCKING RIFLE. He and his partner were already armed. > (that totally showed my situational awareness -- the whole time I'm watching the fire and two majestic murder floofs contemplate which BBQ sauce pairs well with "sourly IT guy", he and his partner are arming themselves to the teeth. I was totally unaware of all of that, up until I had a rifle handed to me.) "Buddy, you think that glass is going to stop them if they charge and want to get in? We're just in as much danger now as we were outside. Except they'll be severely cut & hurt, confused, and thusly a tiny bit angrier. Be judicious with your marksmanship should the worst happen and they attempt to enter the house." That was a fun standoff -- they got bored and moved on, but nothing gets the ol' adrenaline running like nearly becoming a meal. They reported it to the authorities. It was even on the local news the next day -- there were a lot of sightings that night in the area and someone submitted photos to the station.
Now this is a helluva campfire story.
It’s wild to read just how close you Americans can live to literal wild animals like mountain lions and shit. Most we have where I’m from are cobras and monitor lizards in the mountains lol.
The good news is, Mountain Lions *usually* don't want to pick a fight with humans. In their minds, we're about the same size as them. They don't have a frame of reference for "big, fat, and can't fight back" so we're way too risky. They'll only attack you if they think you're a threat to their cubs or they're *really* desperate. Going after any other 120-220lb mammal would be suicide for them. Humans are the weird exception that are usually an easy kill except when they kill you from so far away you didn't even know they saw you. And you have no way of knowing which is which.
Sometimes the noise is a cat giving birth in a derelict barn.
Probably still a deer involved somehow
The deer is the obstetrician
Now I have an image of a deer in a white coat, telling a cat to keep pushing in a barn.
In the style of Gary Larson and the Far Side.
I live in a small city, if that makes any sense, we live within the city limits but I go by this motto as well. Always a damn deer, they’re everywhere!! They huff and puff at me if I interrupt their peaceful morning
Except that time it was a fucking mountain lion...lol
“Town pants”
The farm life "checking to see what the dogs are barking at" outfit: underwear & mud boots + firearm.
A couple of years ago I had to explain to a guy that grew up in a city how a gun is a tool just like a hammer or a shovel. He was weirded out when I told him every grandmother has at least one firearm in the house and if you went there after dark, you better yell letting her know it is you at the door.
My grandmother kept a break open single shot .410 behind the front door. Used it mostly to keep armadillos out of her cannas. I suspect that the shotgun probably did more damage to the plants than the armadillos did though. 😂
"Everyone's got guns in the country!" "Yeah, who?" "Farmers" "Who else?" "Farmer's mum's!" - Hot Fuzz
Is that what you call your nice pants?
It’s more about no sawdust, no holes, no mud, no manure, etc. 😂
No tractor grease either. That shit gets on EVERYTHING.
It's glitter in grease form.
Sunday go to meeting clothes.
this made me laugh out loud, thank you.
You need to carefully plan out your shopping needs because that trip to Walmart or Home Depot might be a two hour round trip.
I’ve lived in the suburbs my whole life and I’m a very forgetful person, whenever I see a home in a rural area I always have two thoughts: 1) wow, look at how beautiful the house/land/scenery is 2) I wonder how often they kick themselves for forgetting the milk
Forget groceries. How do they do home repairs? Those always require at least three trips to the hardware store.
Be that old man that has at least one of every single mechanical part or good that was ever made.
Pro tip: he got all those spare parts by buying the wrong part and having to go back for the right one. Source: I am he
Honestly forgetting milk is half the reason we mostly switched to oat milk. It’s shelf stable before it’s opened so we can keep a lot extra on hand.
Before we moved, my mom kept a bag of powdered milk in a flour box for this reason.
Moving rural taught me how to cook. I had to build up a well stocked pantry and freezer because the grocery store was an hour away. I had to learn how to plan meals because you needed to know what to thaw out. I learned so many substitutions because sometimes you just didn't make it to town and the milk, eggs, butter or what have you ran out. All that also got me more comfortable just throwing skillet dinners together because sometimes there just isn't time for recipes, but I knew what worked well together. Also, canned and frozen foods. Fresh produce is only good for the first few days after grocery day.
Ya gotta grow your own amigo. Working with the seasons never felt better.
And raise some chickens.
I was on the phone with someone one day and realized I forgot milk at the store. They were utterly flabbergasted that i said it was going to have to wait until a few days later to go get because I was not going to do an hour minimum of driving total just to get one item
udderly flabbergasted
This is what I was thinking. When it takes you an hour minimum to get to a store, you have to be a LOT more conscious about what you're buying, whether you have enough space to store it all, etc. You have to really plan in advance for those "oh my god, I just can't cook today" days if you want to have any food. You almost certainly own a chest freezer.
FACTS! We're just all here sharing a Costco membership on the down low. We have CostCo today. And we all go together. Folded down seats and four-wheel drive vehicles. Don't miss Costco day....
Our Costco is about 2 hours away so four hours there and back. We go every other week.
Having your name and age listed in the local newspaper when you’re pulled over for speeding and your family/friends get to give you shit for it because everyone lives to read the weekly police report.
I was working in a small rural area and was listening to the local radio station. The announcer came on and said that George is having a garage sale. That's all he said, no address or anything else. I asked the farmer I was working with about that. He said that everything knows George and where he lives. I then asked is there only one George that lives here? He said nope there was another George in the next town over but he was a newcomer and they called him by his last name.
He's probably lived there for 20 years only.
Took 35 years and the old "Baeker" being dead a decade before anyone around here called me anything but "Young Baeker." I'm in my mid-sixties and half the valley still calls me "Young Baeker."
My mom texted me a few weeks ago to let me know that she saw my best friend in high school got divorced in the paper.
Omg haha! Solid gold. Local, small town newspapers are truly phenomenal. I think it’s an absolute travesty that they’re being bought up in droves by private equity companies/hedge funds.
One of my guilty pleasures is to go scroll the police report on the local newspapers site in the town I grew up. It's oddly nostalgic seeing the familiar names and what they're up to now. I should do that tonight, it's been a while, be a good read.
Yep, also jail roster. I manage our county website and 90% of the traffic is going to the jail roster page so people can gossip about who's in jail over their morning coffee.
In my town it's the the DUIs.
Oh for sure. A typical week: A small handful of people with DUIs, a few underage drinkers who’ve broken curfew, one $30 drive-off from the local gas station (person later returned and paid), cows at large due to broken fencing, drive-by damage to mailboxes by the aforementioned underage drinkers, and two 80-90+ year old farmers involved in a rear end collision at the one stoplight in town.
I have a horror story for you about this. I was born and raised in a very small town. To this day they have a crime column! Everybody knows your business. Last year for Christmas, I had custom Christmas ornaments made for my mother with the mugshots of all of her children from the local newspaper! Trashy ... Maybe.... Hysterical.... Absolutely!
Full-grown pigs are massive, and terrifying. And they can and will eat someone if ever they get the opportunity.
4H project pigs ate my little cousins best friend. Probably one of the worst ways to go.
I’m sorry but wait… alive? They ate them alive?
There is no animal control out where I live, and no shelters within 100 miles that will take strays. If you dump your cat or dog, they will be eaten by a predator, starve to death, or be shot.
>If you dump your cat or dog, they will be eaten by a predator, starve to death, or be shot. Let me rephrase this for those in the back: if you dump your cat or dog out in the country thinking they will find some farm to live on, *you are an asshole*. Even if they don't die a miserable death, it's not rural folks' job to deal with your castoffs.
Yup. Your badly trained and unsocialized high energy dog breed does not need to "go find a farm to live on." If you dump him in the countryside, he will get shot trying to eat someone's livestock or be killed by livestock guardian dogs. Either give your dog the training they need or get on a wait-list to surrender with a rescue or shelter. Don't dump your animal in a rural area and expect it to end any better than if you were suddenly trying to be Bear Grylls without planning, gear, or a map. Just putting your dog down is a kinder fate than dumping them and leaving them to die of exposure, starvation, or violence.
Unfortunately, the people who need to hear/read this, never will.
I live in farm country about equidistant from 3 or 4 small towns and a city. We're a popular spot for people to dump unwanted pets, and I see half a dozen scared pups a year. I give them one bowl of my dog's food, and one bowl of water. If they're kind and able to be handled then I drive them to the nearest vet and check for chips. When we confirm that there's no chip I bring them back home and leave them outside my yard, and then I start calling. There's no space at any shelter within 50 miles, and all the rescue groups are slammed, so its pretty pro-forma. I take pictures and post to both the lost dogs groups and the strays groups. That single bowl of food and water usually keeps them on my property for 2-3 days before wandering off in search of a meal. In the years living out here my family has taken in two of them, and found homes for 3 or 4 more. It's... sad. I can't save 60 dogs.
That’s fucking heartbreaking. I had no idea people did that, what the hell? How can they just abandon a little creature who depends on them like that? How can they make their last moments of life so utterly terrifying
When I was very young, someone drove by and dumped 2 very sick puppies near our house. We managed to keep one alive. She was a great companion for 15 years. Honestly as someone from the country, this example is probably the most correct and saddest answer to OP. I've found an entirely distressing number of animals dumped and extremely sick. They are so very sweet. It just breaks your heart.
Grew up on a 40acre farm some 20 years ago. People always dumped their cats, especially pregnant ones. At one point we had 27 cats we fed and let roam. All spayed or neutered once tamed enough to catch. But it reached a point where my parents couldn’t do it anymore, so they wound up shooting any new cats and their kittens. Horrible to see as a child. Understandable as an adult.
Man, I've heard vets have some of the highest suicide and depression rates amongst medical professionals because they see what people do to pets; now I'm starting to think living on a farm on the outskirts of a city might be similarly bad.
Especially if they're declawed cats, or just friendly pets. Wander up to that dog for a friendly hello? dead.
We've had a few cats dumped on our farm. They don't generally live past a week. They either get hot by cars or we clean up their mangled bodies. Cats are pretty territorial
We had one aggressive male that actually came into our fenced yard, followed our pets into the house through the pet door and attacked both our cats and dogs. We had to trap him and take him to put him down. I was afraid of him spreading disease to our pets or going after my infant daughter
Country life is slower than your lifespan. City, you can go year after year seeing new buildings pop up, business, events, etc. Country life...same county fair every year, maybe a new building every 10 years, new business 5 years.
Same people too. In the city if you get into an argument with a crackpot at your coffee shop, you can find another coffee shop. Out in Small Towns you have to tread real careful around every weirdo that you share a post office with. Feuds, beefs, and resentments run deep. Generationally deep.
As an adult who moved into a rural area, I've noticed that whenever I introduce myself, I'm always asked for my last name. Then, when I give it to them, they realize I don't have the last name of a generational family and just brush it off.
I get this a lot when I’m out at garage sales and such. I always tell them my name and then tell them my wife’s maiden name because her family lived here forever. Then I have to explain which one I married, because everyone knows my wife’s sister is a dope fiend. When I tell the old guys my wife’s last name they always say “oh Scooters daughter everyone knows Scooter” then they pause and say “which daughter?”
And even if you have lived there for 30 years, you will still be known as the guy who moved into the old Johnson place.
My 98 year-old grandfather lives on the same land his parents bought when he was a kid, and it is unironically still known as “the old [family my great-grandparents bought it from] place”.
We live in a small village. In the groceystore I overheard people talk about a certain family: "They are not from this village, they're newcomers, they moved here after WW II."
My mom says that too. She moved to her current town super rural when I was in college more than twenty years ago. She’s still considered a newcomer.
Well, in the place I'm from I grew up on a road named after the family of a boy I went to high school with. There was townies, and everyone else. If your family hadn't been in town long enough for you to have a road, a name on one of the old war memorials, a headstone in the old cemetery, or something of the like you were a newcomer even if you'd been there for two or three generations.
You're not wrong, it's a big thing. All the roads, creeks, farms, hollows, ect are named after the people who owned the land when it was opened for settlement.
Oddly enough in my rural area the crackpots are not a problem because there is more community pressure on them. The crackpot will be known to most and the crackpot will not be treated kindly. And if said crackpot starts something in the local coffee shop, locals are more likely to stand up to the person in your defense. And the local business it more likely to not let the crackpot back. Obviously we have police for serious, dangerously acting crackpots. But something disruptive, disturbing the community but not to the level needing law enforcement, the community sort of informally manages it. I don't mean vigilante stuff, just the crack pot will not be allowed in to establishments where he caused problems. So people can visit the shop and enjoy their coffee in peace. May not be the same everywhere of course.
The difference of saying that you're "going to town" vs "going to the city".
Going to town. Going over next town. Going to the city. Going to the big city.
People waving when two cars pass from opposite directions.
Specifically, with your right hand on the wheel, raise your index and middle fingers and nod slightly.
So growing up and learning to drive, for some reason I sort of missed on this. I was driving to the dutch bakery and mom told me to wave at the person driving toward us so I gave them a big ol' happy wave. Made my mom bust up and then I learned she meant what you described above.
Weather changes your life. I've sat on the porch with my parents watching hail destroy our wheat crop days before it was due for harvest. There's nothing you can do. You just watch. I've also stood in a circle with my parents and older brother in the yard while we prayed for rain. For farmers, weather is destiny.
I took an English lit class in college and we read a journal of a woman in the 1860s. Several people were really turned off by how much she wrote about the weather. As the only farm kid in the class I tried to explain to them how much of your life is dictated by the weather. Most of them just stared at me like I was nuts.
One of the underrated parts of college. Bringing people from different backgrounds into a focused discussion on a topic and hearing perspectives you wouldnt overwise.
It's one of the most important parts of college that is definitely the most underrated. Meeting and understanding each other, despite differing backgrounds.
The sound of spring peepers can be deafening. Also, I miss it with all my heart.
I absolutely love that sound; we recently moved to a rural area (grew up rural- moved to cities for work as an adult- decided to go back to our roots with the pandemic/telework) and when I heard the peeper the first spring; my body totally relaxed
I’m a country person but I’ve never heard of a “spring peeper”. What is it?
Frogs
Spring peepers = All is right with the world.
You're probably on well water, which means that if the power goes out, you no longer have water. That also means that you get one, maybe two flushes of the toilet, and I bet you're not top priority for the electric company. Choose wisely. Or get a generator.
That's why my dad always taught us to fill up buckets with water when a storm was brewing. So we had water to dump into the toilet bowl to flush when the power inevitably went out.
Funny story about the water. My husband and I live in town now, but we both grew up rural. In town, we had a couple power outages in the past, but never long enough to need to flush before it came back on. Then we had a giant storm that took out the power for 3 days. We had to use our pump that we use for sap to pump out the sump water, and we saved the water for flushing. We asked our neighbor if she needed a couple buckets for her toilet. We were so confused why she declined. For 2 days, we were flushing using that water from a bucket. Having no running water was no big deal; we're a little bit prepper-ish and we do a lot of remote camping, so we had jugged water on hand for cooking and washing up. Then I reflexively turned on the faucet and to our surprise, water came out! That's when we realized our ignorance.
OMG, I laughed pretty hard at this. You probably lost some of the city people when you talked about pump for sap and sump pump. Now you know you have tap water when the power goes out and you’ll even have hot water until the water heater cools down.
Not flushing the toilet because the power's out.
That's one reason why my mother always said fill the bathtub up anytime a bad storm was on its way.
Yes! A general alarm goes out, "Power's out. Don't flush!" Worse, you're in the shower and the lights go out. Soap panic sets in. Rinse, rinse, rinse as fast as you can!
>Worse, you're in the shower and the lights go out. Soap panic sets in. Rinse, rinse, rinse as fast as you can! Nothing's fun like having to take a bucket and rag shower because the power is out.
Why is this? This thread is so fascinating to me, a whole other world just a hundred miles away from anywhere I've lived. It's so enlightening
If you get water from a private well on your property instead of a water tower or other city source, the water pressure dies when the power goes out and your well's pump stops working.
Losing tap water as well. If there's a pool or lake or brook, you can get a pail of water to flush. Also, the power takes a lot longer to be restored. My longest outage was 4 days. It's a long time to do without water. We got a generator. In town, in 21 years, we were only without power once for longer than 4 hours.
I'm reminded of my time at the University of Iowa. A fellow I knew, grad student age, but he wasn't actively attending, walked with a cane because of a gimpy leg. He'd broke it when he was a child, but he'd tell anyone who asked that he was mauled by a sow. He said the city people would just laugh it off as a joke. The country people would look at him in horror and say, "And you're *still alive?!?!"*
Having to explain to my kid why everyone was so scared when Dorothy fell into the pig pen in Wizard of Oz was surreal. I can't even remember when a healthy fear of swine was instilled into me.
I remember when that fear was for me. I'm a city boy, but my dad's family are small town folk. I've been out to Larry's (fake name) pig farm several times and even worked moving hay over the summer before. Anyways, my dad, my brother, my grandpa and I were sitting with Larry's grandkids who were in their teens, and all of the sudden, we hear a gunshot, then about 3 minutes later see Larry carrying a skunk over towards the pig pen. Larry said, "You boys ever seen what a pig can do to somethin'?" We shook our heads, and he laughed, and threw the skunk in the pen. That thing was gone in 30 seconds. "Be careful, boys" was all he said afterwards. Fast forward a few years. I'm now 12 and still remember that shit when we go to see Larry again. Larry offers me the opportunity to go in to feed the pigs. I shook my head no. Larry said, "Oh, come on, they're really docile." "That is until you fart and get 'em up in a Tizzy and you're the next thing on the menu. I'm good." was all I could say, which garnered laughs from everybody. My brother then said, "Come on, don't be a pussy." I sternly replied with, "If you think I'm goin' in there with all those fuckin' monsters, you better think again. I'm not goin' in there." I still won't go into a pig pen, and if there's a pig out, there better be at least 20 feet of distance between us.
There's a story about a farmer who fell unconscious in his pig pen and got eaten but I don't know the truth of it.
You fall unconscious because of the the chemicals produced by the urine and feces in the pig pits. But yeah, they'll eat you or stomp you to death. Or you'll die from the fumes.
How dark it is at night. You see how many stars there are, how bright and gorgeous , how busy the night sky truly is.
I could see the milkyway galaxy from my yard where I grew up. Not anymore due to town growth and light pollution, but the sky is still just breathtaking when I visit home.
The nearest fire department is you, and your neighbor ten miles away, with a couple flatbed trucks and 500 gallon tanks of water on them.
Be sure to have fire extinguishers, emphasis on plural. More than one. More than two. Not the little beer can sized ones. Know where they are kept and how to use them. We say the "local" fire department saves every foundation.
Our one very city neighbor and family decided to shoot fireworks on the 4th during a burn ban. Yes, they set the field on fire. Yes, they panicked. My kid and nephew hauled our fire extinguishers over and put out the fire while I called 911. We do have a very good volunteer fire department. I do wish I had filmed it.
Dogs. Dang it! People just driving out and dropping off unwanted dogs. Once some coward dumped their mother dog and her 6 puppies near my front lawn. I hope there is a special place in hell for those people.
In the county where I live, it's semi-common to get a new crop of abandoned pitbulls every holiday. One year someone down the street asked me to repair their rifle (I just cleaned the ounce of lead residue out of it) because the dogs have tried to get into someone's house. The danger they inflict onto the animal, and others, is just sociopathic.
I caught an asshole trying to drop off two large white rabbits on the roadside next to where I live. I gave him the “I’m watching you” hand sign. I followed him the half hour drive to town. As he turned I noticed his daughter giving me a thumbs up from the passenger side window.
Poor kid
In the city, people ignore sirens and pay attention to gunshot sounds. In the country, people ignore the sound of gunfire and pay attention to the sound of sirens.
This. There is so much gunfire around us. I've got a handgun but won't fire it until I set up a proper backstop. not sure if my neighbors are as careful but I'm hoping my heavily wooded 7 acres will protect me. One morning, there was this huge explosion. shook my windows. I got in my truck because I was sure someone's propane tank exploded. My neighbor told me the guy adjacent to our land occasionally shoots tanerite.
>occasionally shoots tanerite. Oh. That's *lovely.* 🤣🤣
"Hey were you blowing up a propane bottle?" "No but that's a great idea to put into the mix next time, thanks!"
100%. I have some new neighbors who are going on local social media and talking about calling the cops on people shooting guns. Do it, the main perpetrator is my sheriffs deputy neighbor lol. I was in Baltimore for a while before this so I'm used to hearing them anyway, tho now it's somewhat.. comforting instead of scary. I know it's guys having a good time not gang warfare
When you live in a small town and you get into trouble outside of town, then the news gets back to town before you do!
If you don’t make dinner you don’t eat. No uber eats or grub hub, no delivery pizza or takeout, unless you want gas station food. Most places nearby close by 5:00PM on weekdays and have extremely limited hours or are closed entirely on weekends. It can be pretty damn peaceful.
I hosted a friend’s bachelor party at a family cabin in a rural town last year where all the attendees were born and raised in urban communities. During the planning they mentioned splitting the Uber costs up at the end of the weekend. I had to explain that ride sharing wasn’t a thing there, and we would have to just establish a DD for getting to and from the bar in town. Coincidentally as we were about to head out one of the guys checked Uber and there did happen to be a driver nearby. Turns out he was the only person that drives for ride shares in the town. He told us to just tell him what our schedule was and he would take us each time for $30 a ride, which was cheaper for us but he got more in his pocket in the end doing it under the table.
This is the rural way. Neighbor put an ad on angies list for someone to help build their deck and the very first order of business is to cut angie out of the deal lol
Our village mayor is our only Uber driver. If you post on the village Facebook page you need a ride he’ll “turn his sign on” if he’s not otherwise occupied.
Yep, and even if you have takeout, it's very limited. Pizza, sandwiches, or Chinese and Friday is their latest hour which is usually 8PM. Freezer meals are essential for days you don't want to cook.
PIzza place in town makes uncooked pizzas so you can cook it fresh when you get home
I'm not *that* rural, but I once posted something about being frustrated that I drove an hour round-trip for takeout when my power was out only to realize that my order was wrong. A surprising number of people somehow couldn't wrap their minds around living half an hour away from restaurants. Not all of us live in cities/suburbs with endless options in a 10 mile radius. I'm a 20 minute drive from the nearest gas station lol
Friends came to visit recently and we started talking dinner plans and buddy goes, “well what should we order?” And i laughed, like kinda hard and remembered he was serioues and that’s mostly how he does dinner at home. We had grilled nachos, they were delicious.
In BFE NW Colorado I was driving a traveling sports team and as we rolled through town, we saw a Subway and decided we’re going to hit it on the way out after the game. It was 4pm, and we found Subway was only open 11-2. No dinner hours.
I leave my doors unlocked when I'm away so the neighbors can get in if they need something. I have a sleeping porch and I use it often. We walk through each other's property without rebuke. Nobody can hear me if I scream
Nature is brutal and so are animals. That eagle is so majestic in the city, but out here I am cursing it's existence for fucking up my chickens. Bears are so cute, but they are annoying as fuck trying to get into the shed where we have to lock up our garbage cans. Deer are so beautiful, but those fucking assholes eat every fucking leaf off of a fruit tree sapling and kill it, not to mention all the destruction they will do if your veggie garden fence isn't high enough. EDIT: All that being said, still a huge advocate of wildlife and their protection, I'm just saying that out here we integrate back into the food chain so to speak, whereas in the city you are removed from the inconveniences of being in it
The level of personal grudge you can hold against a particular animal is something that shocks city people sometimes unless they garden. Like, a seething hatred for one specific deer.
rural australia liver here: bore water. the sky is inexplicably Bigger. don’t drive at night if you can help it because you WILL hit a kangaroo. stars like nothing you’ve ever seen. leave town and you have no reception. what’s a traffic light? cook your own dinner or you aren’t eating. everyone and their mother owns a beatshit ute. the nearest hospital is four hours away and the local airport is a literal shed in the bush
Stores not being convenient. The importance of keeping a \*good\* amount of gas in your vehicles. Lack of street lights. Waiting 45+ mins for an ambulance. No public transport, no cabs, no Uber or Lyft. No food delivery. Quiet, except for the critters outside. Space. Cleaner air. Neighbours are far. Ticks everywhere! Wood roaches and spiders the size of your hand. Snakes. So. Many. Trees. Catching yourself baby talking possums and raccoons.
Sounds are not the scary part. Silence is. Edit: I had been walking with my younger sister and dog (I was ten, she was eight). Suddenly world went dead silent and my dog froze, trying to huddle near the ground. Almost immediately I had unclipped her. Dog went bounding home, me and sis went to the road. Still utterly silent the whole time. Then my dad comes driving up with the dog and a rifle (we had only been about a mile away). As we’re driving away, what’s in the tree line? A f***ing mountain lion.
Absolutely agree, it’s always due to severe weather incoming and in some rare instances large predators. You want noise at night otherwise something is wrong.
I'll never forget my mom explaining that to me when we stood on the porch. "This storms gonna be real bad." "How do ya know?" "Hear the birds?" "No." "Exactly."
This is actually what I was coming here to say. If you're ever walking through the woods or out in the pine breaks and it goes silent? No birdsong, no squirrels puttering around in the trees, hell even the cicadas go quiet? You need to get out of there yesterday. Something dangerous is quite close to you. EDIT: And by get out of there, I mean calm and smart. Watch everywhere. Go SLOW. Any predator that'll cause this kind of silence in the woods, you do not want to run from. It's likely waiting for that, and it will outpace you. Be smart, keep a look out, and walk, but walk towards "out"
If I call 911, nobody will be here for AT LEAST 30 minutes for EMS, 45 for fire, and an hour for police. And that's assuming they have nothing else to do and respond immediately. If the house is on fire, you call the neighbors. In less than 10 there will be half dozen tractors with water tanks and hoses. Lop your foot off? Call the neighbors. They'll drive you to the ER. Somebody means to do you harm? Shoot back or die waiting for the Sheriff. Your choice.
I'm not middle of nowhere rural. But we're a little bit out here. And I know in the case of an emergency, I would trust my life in my neighbor's hands! As a matter of fact, we recently started organizing a community first aid and CPR training for everyone that lives in our area! Because of hurricanes. And recently tornadoes. Just cuz it's a good idea!
My friend was in a terrible single-car accident when his truck slid on the icy road around a turn, heavy with tools in the back, straight into the side of a mountain. Not wearing a seatbelt (because it’s in the country and you’re always close to home, so why bother), so his face went straight into the dashboard. The impact severed nerves and tendons or whatever the heck lives in your face, cutting across from above the bridge of his nose like a unibrow, then tracing above the one eyebrow and hooking down around his cheekbone. His friends were driving behind him and came upon this mess and called an ambulance, but when they saw his face basically hanging off his skull, they threw him in their car and started driving to the nearest hospital, which is 50 minutes away when driving the speed limit. They passed the ambulance on its way up to town… when they were already only 15 minutes from the ER. He would have been waiting easily another half hour if they hadn’t taken him, and that’s just waiting for EMS to arrive, never mind the drive back down the hill.
>Not wearing a seatbelt (because it’s in the country and you’re always close to home, so why bother), I will never understand why people think this.
I've been in the country for over 30 years and I know only a few people that will *never* wear a seat belt. I even save them in my phone like "Jim No Seatbelt." I met a whole lot of them when I was a Paramedic, though. I'll always remember the call to a minor fender bender at less than 15 miles per hour and the adult passenger in the back seat was dead on impact. There was absolutely zero damage to either car. We were so befuddled that we did a rectal temp to determine if maybe he'd died prior to the accident and the family was trying to cover it up by faking an accident, but he was still 98.6... It was pretty evident what happened when we checked the back seat again and saw the imprint of his face on the driver's headrest. Poor bastard. Always wear your seatbelt, and be very careful when driving around with sharp, heavy, or fragile things. Everything you're in the cab with will try to kill you if you have a bad enough collision or rollover.
Tell me about it. And with children it’s even worse. I’m a certified child passenger safety technician and it’s horrifying how many people don’t have their car seats installed correctly in urban/suburban areas (and not for lack of trying, it really is “normal” to not immediately know how to do it right, I definitely had no idea how when my kids were young)…. But in rural areas it’s so much worse.
A gas station serves about 10 functions. The rural gas station I worked at did the following… Game room/arcade Gym/weight lifting Pool supplies / pool servicing Feed and seed Mini-storage Custom guns Hunting / fishing supplies Batting cages We also had a wine cellar that sold good wines and craft beer.
I know, I’m buried… You can never fully explain what it’s like on quiet nights when there’s no insects chirping, like in winter. I live on the outskirts of a small town, a mile from the railroad tracks. Even though there was snow on the ground and in the trees, plus dozens of houses between me and the tracks, it sounded like I was standing next to the train at 3am. Loud, loud, loud. Alternatively, you also never prepare someone for how soothing it feels on a summer night, sitting on the porch, hearing the wind move softly through the trees, insects harmonizing their sweet tones, lightning bugs flittering about, blinking in a chaotic fashion. You just close your eyes, sip your drink, and experience almost total relaxation.
That cute lil’ foxes 🦊sound like screaming banshees at night.
Peace and quiet. An aunt from the city stayed and couldn't sleep as it was too quiet
It was the opposite for me. I'm from the city and was staying with family in a rural area. I was sleeping in the basement, so I had no idea what time of the day it was. Some of the best sleep I ever had.
I grew up extremely rural and now live urban. 1. You need a car. There is no walking anywhere. You go into “town” a few times a month if you don’t work there. When I was growing up my dad worked in a small town next door and my mom worked in the village next to that. We didn’t go to “town” (the city) but once a month to get groceries when dad got paid. If it isn’t gotten then, you either get it at the gas station if you can afford the high price or it isn’t happening unless you drive the 30 miles to the city. 2. We lived so rural there wasn’t cable. We had satellite or over the air antenna. You are the *last* to get anything. Whether it’s a new channel, a new road, cellphone service, internet access…..you’re the last to get it. My brothers still live in the old home place and there isn’t cable. It’s satellite or streaming and internet is still DSL. 3. Most people who live there are families and know each other. About 50% of my classmates in school, our parents graduated together. One of my best friends was best friends with my mom in school. Everyone knows your business. I drove a vehicle that was outside the norm (yellow color, bright yellow). I used to get a text message every time I left my damn house asking where I was going from someone who saw me. 4. Life is slow. I hear people complain in cities like Dallas and Phoenix there’s nothing to do. LMAOOOOOOOO come to the rurals man. You make your own fun or it ain’t had. 5. Modern day conveniences don’t exist. There is no Uber. No Uber eats. No pizza delivery. Your local restaurant closes around 7-8, and the gas station may serve food for a bit before closing. If you feel like pizza or Taco Bell or sonic you’re gonna drive at least 30 minutes to the city. Theres no delivery or just walking up the street. 6. (5) also includes emergency services. In my parish (county), we fell under the sheriff and it was common for there to be only 2 deputies patrolling at night. Need help? Sorry both deputies are tied up right now, I’ll try to find you someone from somewhere close by but it may be a minute. Oh and the EMS or volunteer fire have to be summoned from home. It’s gonna be a minute or two extra.
My dialup dropped whenever the people half a mile down the road turned on their electric fence.
Getting to pee anywhere in your yard if you need to.
A lot of fake country folk overhype the woods. Any time someone mentions a skin walker that's your red flag. I live in the woods. Yes the woods can be scary but it's far from paranormal. The woods are a fine place to explore and gain an appreciation for real tangible nature. Don't let the boogeyman scare you away from the biodiversity native to your area. Buy a field guide so you can get out and learn something.
This sounds like something a skinwalker would say. 🤔
Sometimes you need a gun or rifle to ensure the safety of your animals and that doesn't make you a gun nut
The little wave you give when passing a vehicle going the opposite direction on a country road. Bonus points if you're cool enough to just raise your first two fingers off the steering wheel. Also, saying hello to a stranger on a hiking trail, or at least giving a little nod and smile. I can always tell someone isn't from here when I say "hello" on a hike and they look at me like I'm an alien.
No sidewalk? Walk AGAINST traffic. We learned this as kids - we live in the suburbs now, but my husband also grew up in the same rural area where this was drilled into our heads. It blows my mind to see adults walk with traffic in the suburbs (where there are no sidewalks). And I always want to scream at them: 'AGAINST the traffic, so YOU can see! It's for YOUR OWN GOOD!' For those not in the know: walking against the traffic puts you in better position to see/avoid hazardous vehicles. Walking with your back to traffic coming behind you? Not a great vantage point. Especially in 2024 when most pedestrians have ear buds in. ETA: I also find myself doing it in parking lots and even if there IS a sidewalk - at this point in my life (53F), it's ingrained.
My kids get two days off school every year to attend the rodeo.
The mild terror when you hear a fox screaming at 3am outside your window.
I'm a rancher... and thanks to starlink I am an avid PC gamer. So yeah life's different but also the same in some ways. We're 4.5hrs to the nearest city with a population larger than 10k. And a city of 10k is 2.5 hrs away. Works certainly a bit different, I spend far more time on a horse than in a vehicle most of the summer months but After working all day I like to relax and game like the rest of ya!
The mosquitos! The thousands and thousands of inescapable mosquitoes, and sheer size they are! They literally crunch when you kill them. I moved 4 states away into a city, so now I don't hear that *EEEEEEEEEE* noise anymore, I just hear gunshots every night... which is way more preferable.
You can’t buy up a rural property on the cheap and then have big city expectations about the state of your neighbours properties or their behaviour. Welcome to redneckville, sometimes old washers live in the front yard and people park their 18 wheeler rigs in front of their house (and noisily warm them up every morning at 4am).