If you are deathly afraid of spiders, you might not want to hang out in a barn. I know very little about spiders, but I do know they like barns…at least ours.
Recently there was a large black round one with a bright design on her midsection…she had her web inside the trash can where we store the wheat bran. (My son said she’s probably a Black Widow.) I carefully scooped the bran around her web. Two days later, she was gone. Then there are of course the mice… they are cute to be sure but skitter around too much for my nervous nature, and though I can live with them being there, I’d rather not see them.
A mention of barn mice must be followed with a tribute to barn cats. We’ve had an assortment of feral cats at the barn over the years, and it’s so easy to grow fond of them. We have a couple right now who let me pick them up but scamper away from anyone else. I feed them, so that’s no surprise. There is one survivor of an entire litter of feral cats whose mother settled them in different places around our ranch several years ago, moving them when a person took too much interest in her kittens. We named the mother Hissie (for obvious reasons). One of her established “homes” for the kittens was in a classic car chassis (probably a MB 300SL, my husband’s specialty) in my husband’s auto restoration shop which is on the property.
Hissie may not have had a family tree of well bred champions, but she had class. She lived in the barn for a few years and then slowly the inherent dangers for outdoor cats ended the family except for Frostie, a long-legged, elegant silver- gray tabby who still lives there, along with Princess Anne (who was dropped off here in the dead of night with her mother and litter mates). There is also “BK” (Bully Kitty) who is entirely feral and tries to run off the other cats. Archie, our dear dog, rounds out the barn crowd, though he spends part of his days and all of his nights on our couch or bed in the house. I’m sure there are other creatures out there that I haven’t come across yet, who hint of their presence with overturned cat food dishes and apparent attempts to get into cat food cans with tooth and claw. Well, I have come across skunks in the feed room. That story will wait for another day. A close call.