The Outskirts

There is a station in the farthest outlying area of my department that I got to work at for the first time recently. They respond mostly to auto wrecks on the one lane road that leads out there and grass fires. It is literally out in the middle of nowhere. There's is no cell reception, wifi, or anything else.  Well, I can't say nothing else. There are plenty of scorpions and rattlesnakes and other assorted critters. At this station you are not supposed to leave your gear on the floor of the apparatus bay because you never know what might end up inside them. In the kitchen, hanging next to the fly swatter, is a snake stick. Yeah, they keep it in the kitchen.

From the apparatus bay into the station you pass through sort of an airlock. One door leads into a little antechamber with sticky bug traps in all four corners. There is no shortage of crickets and other
bugs stuck there. You then pass through another door that leads into the dormitory hallway. By each dorm is another sticky trap (with, fortunately, considerably less guests stuck to them).

I saw no snakes or scorpions during my shift. I did, however, see a deer about fifty feet away at the station fence line and in the evening we had an after dinner visitor. A raccoon appeared at the kitchen slider. He is apparently a regular guest because, instead of shooing him away, the crew went to the fridge and got an egg, opened the slider, and left it for him. He tentatively approached, picked up the egg, trotted back a few feet and ate it. They then grabbed a piece of bread and laid it down right outside the slider. The raccoon again came right up grabbed the slice of bread, held it in his mouth and went trotting off.

It was a slow weekend day so nothing much happened as far as calls went but it was a different experience none the less.