It was the fall of 1979.  I was there with my new bride, a proper city girl, and doing my best to make her transition smooth as possible as she settled into life in the wilds of Labrador.  I often wonder how she made it through the early bush days with all the bugs and wolf sightings, the occasional bear passing through and the battle with the bats.  Even back then the Anne Marie log cabin would settle and little holes in the logs would happen, and of course, all kinds of little things can then get in . . .

The weather had turned cold in September of that first year, so on our fall close up we made Anne Marie into a one room dwelling and cranked up the old wood stove.  Dragged the beds to the main room so we wouldn’t freeze as the nights dipped well below zero and the stove embers would only keep you toasty for so long.  Ever wake and get the feeling something, someone, was looking at you?  And it wasn’t Lorraine … something small and sinister was peering down at us, I could barely pick it out in the glow of the wood stove.  Obviously Lorraine had the same eerie feeling as she stirred and screamed.  I reached out in the darkness, grabbed a stick of firewood and just let it go into the general direction of the eyes.

Have you ever seen the teeth on a flying squirrel?  Basically, it’s just like large, flying bat.  I have not seen many more of them at Anne Marie in the thirty-five years since, but we do know one thing, they do not make good house guests.

Happy Halloween from all of us at Coopers’ Minipi Lodges.

— Jack