I called it a nameless mountain, but it actually has a nickname.
There’s a river nearby, so apparently people call it Mount Sawa because it’s rich in water.
I’ve been living in the former home of the head of the village, but this place was once a settlement, so there are five or six other houses around here. Their inhabitants got too old, so they moved to the village at the foot of the mountain or to a nearby town.
At first I wondered about property rights, but apparently they were all renting in land developed by the former head of the village, so that’s not a problem.
The head of the village and his family stayed as long as they could, but in the end, the cold in the mornings and evenings wasn’t good for their aging bodies, so they went to live in the village three years ago. And apparently their children have homes in the town.
Still, since this was their land, they still visited once a week to look after the house and the field. That’s why it was pretty much already in a livable state when I got here.
If it wasn’t for that, I would’ve had to build a house, and probably abandon it soon because getting through the road would be such a pain. It takes about twenty minutes to get to my house from the village by car.
It’s a narrow road full of turns, so it’s a pain to drive. Snow doesn’t accumulate too much during the winter in this region, but I can imagine going to the village in the winter not being easy too.
I’m really glad I bought those chicks. Although they’re no longer chicks at this point.
They really are great. Too great even, to the point where I wonder if they aren’t going to take over the house.
I bought the mountains to escape from reality, so I really had no concept of what living on a mountain would be like. A friend of my mother’s relative was concerned, so he lent me a mini truck and gave me a list of things I would need to live here. Without those, I’d be stumped already.
I started living here at the end of March, and April is almost over.
I have electricity here, and get TV and internet. I get propane gas from the village, and water from the river. There’s also spring water too apparently, and I also use water from the river to flush the toilet. But there’s no sewage system, there’s a septic tank. That’s why I’ll have to call a waste collection vehicle once a year, and apparently it’s not cheap either.
Let’s talk about that some other time. What am I doing with the pit viper I caught?
They’re probably living in one of the homes, and becoming active as the weather gets warmer.
The first one I saw was about half a month ago, when Pochi caught it. It wasn’t too big, so it might have been born not too long before that.
And Pochi made sure to show it to me. I was pretty frightened.
“Eh? A snake… A pit viper… You eat those?”
Pochi nodded.
“Eh… Are you sure? Well, fine then… You can eat it, I don’t need it.”
And then, the three chickens started happily eating, as I wondered if chickens even ate snakes.
I looked it up, and saw that it really was a pit viper. It looked ominous with those stripes.
I turned away for a moment, and it was completely gone. They ate it all? What happened to the venom part? Did they throw it away?
I kept an eye on them for the next few days, and I was relieved to see they were doing fine, and the venom didn’t take them from me.
And two days later, it was Tama who brought me one.
“Uou! Ah, yes, eat it.”
And so they did, after I gave them permission. I guess they see me as their owner, so they usually come to me to show me what they caught. But showing me snakes wasn’t all that good to my heart.
Then, two days after that, Yuma brought me one. Just how many pit vipers are on this mountain!?
That day, when Yuma caught one, I went shopping in the village, and visited the middle-aged man that’s the friend of my mother’s relative. And I took Pochi in the driver’s seat with me.
“I see, pit vipers… They’re multiplying because there wasn’t much of a human presence there.”
He said, and I shivered. The bugs are going to come out when it’s warm too. And the snakes are going to become active when they wake up from hibernation.
When I told him my chickens caught pit vipers and ate them, he said it was a waste.
“I wanna drink viper sake. Next time catch one alive, and I’ll buy it.”
“Eh? I can’t do something that scary!”
“I’ll teach you how.”
He said, and he dropped by my house the next day.
And the day after that, he gave a demonstration with a pit viper Tama caught.
“I’m surprised a chicken caught a snake. You can give me one every three days. The rest you can all eat.”
He said to my chickens, and left in a good mood with the pit viper in the plastic bottle. That was about a week ago.
And this one is the second snake I’ve caught. It’s really scary, but I’m happy to do it if it helps.
I put this one and the one I caught before in the mini truck, and head to the village, this time with Yuma in the passenger’s seat.
