Editor's Notes: Shaver spent a lot of time in the shack out in his backyard. He called it "Rock House Studio." It was pretty much a ramshackle joint with a corregated tin roof and asphalt tile made to look like brick nailed to the outside walls. In Summit, Arkansas there are plenty of vermin (and we don't mean the Vermin From Space), the kind of vermin you'd find in a backyard shack full of rocks, papers, photos, darkroom equipment and Shaver Mystery memorabilia. The following excerpts, circa 1973, are taken from a couple of Shaver's letters in which he details an exhasperating episode when he decided to eliminate the critters by lacing the shack with rat poison. Spelling and punctuation are Shaver's own, pretty much.
Rare Color Photo of Shaver Inside his Rock House Studio
revahs, timmus, kra "Dear Used battery complex,
"about the appearance of the battery. I got one for you. Somebody left me a nut half-peeled and ready to eat. it was a hazel nut which is odd enough as I don't recall any hazel nut trees about. they grow up north, wild ... but not here that I noticed anyway. what left it was a trade rat, who has been taking and leaving things all over the place. now, what did he took? ... am missing some close-up tubes. and he left the nut inside a rubber eye-piece I had just left there last night on a lens case. This thing about rats trading always leaves me a little puzzled. they have more sense of fair play than humans, yet they call them rats. When they take something they leave something...and he even peeled the nut halfway so I could eat it without any fuss. It is almost an act of love if I read it right.
"Oh well, maybe he was propitiating the poisoner and magician that struck down the mice with Warfarin hoping I would spare him. Trade rats aint dumb he doesn't eat the Warfarin that I can see.
"I suppose he finds my hidey-hole full of junk quite fascinating
Rock House Studio--Circa 2003
"I used to have squirrels overhead in the loft but the damned Arkies eat squirrels and one is lucky to have one little one left around.
"I used to have possum under the shop till I dumped some developer where he goes...went...in and out...and he left in high dudgeon
"I have 3 inch spiders who get taken with the hypo, trying to drink it for some reason...and can't get out of the tray...far as I am concerned I will leave them plenty...they scare me...spray don't affect them. They could be recluses, I don't know... what do you do about spiders?
"Up north I had kangaroo mice...which are really fascinating...as they chew tobacco...they steal cigareette butts, chew them up and use the cud under their arm pits to kill the lice... which is clever as any Chinese. This is a fact...I looked it up after I observed them stealing my butts... and sure enough, it's a known fact they chew tobacco and use the cud to kill the lice.
"Kangaroo mice//inherit such little memos of brain from a time on earth where: every mind was in more or less contact with every other mind. .. all these creatures we take for "wild" are not in fact wild... but inherit just as many civilized memory patterns as we do... or more
"The bears and lions and things were used for guards... like pussies.
SOME WEEKS LATER...
"My mouse just died of Warfarin with his head on my typewriter ... he was figuring out what the keys were for, I am sure. Just when I was beginning to like him. That was a super mouse and I had to poison him...It's too much. There he was translating my mss! And dying of poison.
"It's disgusting ... it reminds of my goose who committed suicide, to have everything die. I can hear the mice in the loft holding a wake ... rolling the dead ones nuts away ... I've got to get some more warfarin
"It's the spiders that bother me ... and they don't eat warfarin.
"I make a hell of a witch not knowing how to get along with spiders and mice
"I am just glad it ain't bats upstairs but I ain't gonna look
"This typewriter gets gabbier every day ...
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