When I joined the Allison family on August 3, 2002, I was thoroughly initiated into the family as a daugther and sister, and for the first time in my life, I experienced a family with boys! Now, for you to fully appreciate this discovery, I need to give you a bit of background. First of all, I have one little sister and no brothers. Before I married, I had never fired a shotgun or eaten a T-Bone Steak. I couldn't identify a full metal jacket or a "dog food" burrito. I did not realize that bacon bits constituted a perpetual pizza topping. I had never seen a movie staring Jean Claude Van Damme or Chuck Norris nor had I seen any of the Die Hard movies (Gasp). I had never really been camping, and I couldn't start a fire without electricty (and even then, it was only after plugging too many appliances into one outlet). I never owned a dog that weighed more than about eleven pounds. I didn't understand that often male bonding involved destruction of some sort. Even as a tomboy, I was certainly in for a bit of an awakening when I first encountered the Allison brothers.
A family friend once described her little boys and guns: She said that it was no use keeping toy guns out of the family house, because one brother would merely bite his toast into the shape of a gun and use it to shoot his little brother. Joshua and his little brother, Ethan, who is now serving as a Green Beret in the U.S. Army, have definitely had their fair share of adventures, including one recent expedition to try to tackle a pest problem on our farm. For several nights, we heard what sounded like a pack of about a thousand coyotes just outside our fenced yard. Our mighty dachshund, Alvin, even picked a few fights with the coyotes from behind the safety of our chain link fence. Joshua and I felt certain that the pack was merely inching its way closer to our humble abode, spying a delicious weenie dog just on the other side of the fence for those few faithful minutes every evening before coming inside to sleep comfortably on the floor next to our bed. So, the Allison boys concocted a scheme to wipe out the enemy and decided one night to set out to visit the pack with violence.
As the men loaded up enough ammunition to bring down every coyote (and other living thing, for that matter) in the tri-state area, I flippantly inquired about an Oklahoma varmit permit, but I was not really too concerned because I felt confident they would not even encounter a coyote much less fire a shot. The boys optimistically packed skinning knives, and Ethan asked his wife and I to find the telephone number for a local taxidermist. My entire entry way was literally full of army ammunition boxes and gun cases. The boys set out, armed to the gill, and spent the evening sitting on top of an old oil drum in freezing temperatures. Although they insisted that they "heard coyotes in the next section over," they returned without any kill but reported they had a wonderful time visiting out in the freezing darkness.
To tell you the truth, I don't think I have heard the coyotes as much since that fateful evening. My guess is that they took one look at the armed Allison boys through the darkness that night and decided the dachshunds just were not worth the risk.
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