Sidetracked Again By Mother Nature

Catching this beautiful little black garter snake this morning brought back some fond memories of my childhood. I caught two snakes today, this one and a copperhead, which I will talk about in a bit. This little guy was chilled out where I grow my peppers, it was probably stalking the one of the abundant insects or little frogs that love these peppers so much for some reason. No need to relocate him, he is a welcome sight for me, helps keep things in a healthy balance in the garden. Most snakes, if not all snakes, have a place and a role in nature, and lucky for me there are but a couple of poisonous snakes to contend with around here, I will get to that in a bit.

Growing up in southeastern Texas gives a person plenty of opportunity to be exposed to snakes, reptiles, and a good variety of wildlife. My wife will be the first to tell me that most people with an ounce of common sense have an inordinate fear of snakes. But I was different in the beginning when I was very young, I had a fascination with snakes. In my school days I remember seeing a big rattlesnake coiled up underneath my dad’s work truck and, according to my mother, I was stopped shy of grabbing it, which probably saved my life according to my parents.

I remember a time when I caught a small garter snake and approached them with it in a gentle and educational way, and they both began to panic. I was trying to show them how I hold it and how I respected it as a wild creature. I spent allot of time as a kid learning to understand the difference between poisonous and nonpoisonous snakes. An early introduction to snakes knocked any fear of snakes right out of me and since then I have always enjoyed having a snake companion through the years after that even if it was just long enough to carry one home and release into my mother’s garden where it can do some good.

I don’t mind catching a nonpoisonous snake whenever the opportunity presents itself. However, I have a healthy respect for the poisonous ones and give them their space unless they happen to be close to where kids might play, then I may help them relocate or to get on to the great beyond like this copperhead found in my yard below the evil grapefruit tree I was going to take pictures of for y’all. Notice that his head has been severed, yet she is biting herself. A poisonous snake with his head severed can still bite for a long time, many hours, if not days, after it has been cut off. I don’t bury heads, things dig up buried things, it goes into the burn can for disposal.

I detest people who simply kill a poisonous snake indiscriminately just for the sake of killing it. When possible, I relocate the snake, sometimes they just too close though, I have allot of young feet pounding my yard, so I like to keep it as safe for the small human children as I can. There are four kinds of venomous snakes living in Texas, we encounter all but one regularly here in southeast Texas, the coral snake. Now, copperheads, cottonmouths (water moccasins) and rattlesnakes are pretty much everywhere all the time. Where I live my property backs up to the river and I also have a 4 1/2 acre pond, so I see those three pretty regularly.

I will be jointly posting this information on Guide To Ball Pythons because the information just might be beneficial there for readers. For those of y’all who have yet to visit then this would be a good time to see what I’m doing there as well.

Cleaning Out The Closet, Literally

At best, many of the younger readers here have never had the opportunity to ever own, what is now considered, a piece of iconic history, something we used to call a “boom box” or a “ghetto blaster” back in the day. And, if you are wondering, the picture above is just such a relic from my younger years, this is what our “portable music device” looked like. Many, like this one, could be plugged into a wall outlet or have the ten (10) D size battery option. But, we could take our music, carried separately, to play anywhere we pleased. But, enough about my very vague history lesson, that’s not what this post is actually about, it is partly about how we personally like to hear, listen, and feel the energy our music choices.

So, anyway, y’all may have read that I’m unemployed once again, boo hoo me, so I decided to go out to my shop and “piddle about” for a while, listen to my heavy metal music loudly through my ear buds plugged into my cell phone. Its not an uncommon site to see me, yes even at my age, having my music playing directly into my head, cooking off brain cells left and right, for the pure enjoyment of it. As a bonus, it blocks out the “noise” of the world around me. My wife calls my music my “security blanket”, I call it bliss. Let’s just say I have enough digital music on my devices (two devices) that if played straight through, 24 hours a day, I wouldn’t hear the same song twice or repeat for around 27 months (that’s just shy of 20,000 hours of music). Now, add in that I have over 100 eight-track tapes, over 300 vinyl albums, 200 plus cassette tapes, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 plus audio CDs. And yes, I have ” old school ” devices from back in the days to listen to it all. Anyway, I was looking for an old wood chisel set buried somewhere in the shop storage closet to clean up some detail work on a old mantel piece I rescued from this last place I worked for the two weeks. It was a beautiful piece of hand tooled wood that was replaced with a more modern piece of polished marble. Anyway, I saved this 7′ behemoth from the dumpster, knowing I could bring it back to its original 40’s glory.

As I dig, I move shit from here to there and there to someplace else when I find the antique wooden box (circa early 50’s) that had been passed down from father to son a few times over the years, sitting on a shelf under something covered in an old sheet. Lifting the sheet revealed my old boom box. I quickly became sidetracked, yanked the sheet off, and took the old friend out to the work bench. When I plugged her in all the lights came on and everything, I don’t think it has had power put to it since ’99, so I was impressed. I noticed a cassette tape in the in one of the spaces, pressed play, and out of the speakers came, very clear I might add, the voice of Ronnie James Dio, singing “Don’t talk to strangers”. I was transported back in time, to another era, to the day I bought this cassette, upgrading for mobility, to have another format besides the vinyl, that could be played on the go. Do you remember going into music stores just to browse? The musty dusty smell of a place where every generation was welcome and had a place? I sure do, very fond memories indeed. There was certain satisfaction, an anticipation if you will, of walking out of the music store, not being able to wait to get into your room, close your door, and slowly open your new music. And then, then the feeling when you pushed play for the very first time, a virgin tape no longer, hearing the pre-song static, and then, only then, would the sweet music of your choice start leaking out of the speakers, I call this moment one’s musical listening climax, because now you can lay back and just listen. Too dramatic?

Needless to say, the ear buds were out for the rest of the day, as I listened to Dio many times, front and back, never skipping a song, it was a bliss amidst the chaos for me, I was consumed with it, I even caught myself smiling a time or three remembering the past. Funny how music works that way, funny how music can change one’s mood almost instantly, and funny how when life blows or life glows, I turn to my friend, I turn to music. A few of y’all will understand me and the rest of y’all are still scratching your heads. Read the caption in the picture below, if you understand it then you know what I have always known. And, thanks to Rexi, I borrowed it from her Facebook wall, I thought it would really bring my point home.