Start at the beginning

Next we headed to a rancho in the Superstitions, which happened to be the staging area for the original Five Mile Men journey (if you count the first day's abortive trip). For now it's the temporary home of Sylvie, the D.o.C. 65 Mustang, which has nothing to do with this story. We were there to pick up a huge wood-burning stove donated for the new place. The eggs belong to a quail I let live in there because she ran off the packrats.

This is what happens when packrats gentrify your car: they drag cholla joints and feces (their own and any other they can find) all over the engine compartment. (You may recall this happening to Whip It! a few years ago.) My bro-in-law shot the first resident with a pellet gun, but the rodent managed to disappear somewhere in the undercarriage, where he expired. Another packrat moved in later and, along with more cholla joints and feces, dragged the body of the former resident up into the engine compartment as building material. Lovely. Let's all take a moment to love rats deep in our hearts.

Somehow these quail eggs never seemed to hatch, but the mother quail sat on them for months. When I would open the hood she would fly about twenty feet away and make worried noises until I got tired of taking pictures of rat feces.