You can keep snakes and only interact with the other woodland creatures. The garter snakes eat their worms, the water snakes eat their fish, the hog nosed snakes eat their toads, the king snakes eat their water snakes and the black snakes eat their lizards. But if you want to keep snakes and make the leap from impulse power to warp drive you need a lot of one thing and one thing only – mice.
In the fifth grade we moved back to Oak Ridge, Tennessee and my mother went to work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory….. Biology Division. Being a big Biology Division the investigators needed a lot of mice, many of which were raised in the “mouse house”. Mice being mice, they made more mice so that the mouse house always had too many – mice.
Biologists being biologists, they were more than happy to support the scientific leanings of the young. Consequently, all I ever needed to do was tell my mother “I need some mice” and home came a box of pinkies, fuzzes, hoppers, regulars and jumbos. So by the summer of the sixth grade the only limit on the number of quality snakes I could keep was the available space for cages in my bedroom! And it was a fair sized bedroom.
I remember that the richest I ever felt in my youth was late high school when I managed to have in my possession five corn snakes; (plus, of course, a lot of other stuff).
The ironic thing about this mouse-sink, palace-o-snakes arrangement was my mother didn’t mind the snakes but she didn’t like mice. Now that I think back on it maybe that was part of the point; fewer mice in the world.
It probably comes as no surprise that my mother’s friends questioned her sanity. She had a standard reply which I have always since shared with mothers and kids edging toward snakes in the house. My mother would just tell her friends…”Well at least he’s not out stealing hub caps”.
ML
5/25/07
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
8b. At least somebody was prepared
I knew Riley around 45 years ago at summer Camp but remember that he was from New Madrid, Missouri. I remember because he was, even at about 12, so accustomed to people saying “where”? that he would quickly add – “largest city on the Mississippi River….before the earth quake”. A subsequent earth science course confirmed the magnitude of the upheaval which reportedly rang church bells in Boston. So quick was he, at so young an age, with New Madrid highlights that I figured he was sure to end up mayor or at least head of the Chamber of Commerce.
Riley’s other memorable feature was generally being armed to the teeth. Back in those days you could get actual Army surplus from the Army Surplus store; bayonets, machetes, all manner of smaller cutlery. Riley was sawed-off early and if he had actually carried a saw no one would have noticed. I do not remember if he marched around Camp so equipped but if he did it didn’t matter; that’s what summer camp is for. I do know he was always fully armed when ever we went into the field.
One such trip took us to a Tennessee state park for an overnight camp out. Being the nature counselor, after camp site set up, I formed an expedition of the willing and off we went to see what was happening along on the lake’s shore.
Not much was happening until we came upon a fair sized hole in the bank at water level with a fresh mud cloud coming out of it. I alerted the group, opined that it was likely muskrat or snapping turtle activity, and was about to move on because sticking one’s hand in fair sized fresh holes is way too sawed-off. Then Riley must have moved because the sound of clanging metal reminded me we were better prepared to deal with this opportunity than was typically the case. I says, “Riley, let me see your bayonet”. I recall him pleased to share because I suspect he was probably operating under some sort of official “use it and lose it” personal weaponry injunction.
So we start sounding the hole, from the lake end, with the bayonet. It goes easily in as we follow the hole progressing landward. We followed the easy dirt toward the base of a big tree and then we got a “thud” sound from a half depth plunge and the bayonet starts shaking back and forth as if someone were on the other end. I says, “Riley let me see your hatchet”. And down, and around, we dug to a very big, very surprised, snapper. So big in fact that he was too heavy to carry safely by his tail far enough away from my leg. As we wanted more than a “you should have been there” tale back at the camp site a new transport method had to be invented. A kid on each leg was not going to last long and dragging him seemed a little harsh. So (and I still have trouble believing this but it’s what I remember) I hoisted him, his top shell to my skull top, his head to my back, and off to our encampment the proud hunting party marched.
The turtle weighed in at a bit over twenty pounds. Somebody came up with a bath tub for outside the Nature Hut and there the prize resided till Camp’s summer end. I dropped him off in a nearby river and that was that.
I fudged slightly on this story and tracked Riley down with Google. He was still in New Madrid and went way past the Chamber of Commerce from the stand point of the Missouri historical establishment. What I didn’t do was ask him what he had in his pockets. However I predict with high certainty, Riley is rarely without the biggest Swiss Army knife ever made and a leatherman tool (ah technology!) very close at hand. The fundamental things really do apply as time goes by.
ML
5/18/07
Riley’s other memorable feature was generally being armed to the teeth. Back in those days you could get actual Army surplus from the Army Surplus store; bayonets, machetes, all manner of smaller cutlery. Riley was sawed-off early and if he had actually carried a saw no one would have noticed. I do not remember if he marched around Camp so equipped but if he did it didn’t matter; that’s what summer camp is for. I do know he was always fully armed when ever we went into the field.
One such trip took us to a Tennessee state park for an overnight camp out. Being the nature counselor, after camp site set up, I formed an expedition of the willing and off we went to see what was happening along on the lake’s shore.
Not much was happening until we came upon a fair sized hole in the bank at water level with a fresh mud cloud coming out of it. I alerted the group, opined that it was likely muskrat or snapping turtle activity, and was about to move on because sticking one’s hand in fair sized fresh holes is way too sawed-off. Then Riley must have moved because the sound of clanging metal reminded me we were better prepared to deal with this opportunity than was typically the case. I says, “Riley, let me see your bayonet”. I recall him pleased to share because I suspect he was probably operating under some sort of official “use it and lose it” personal weaponry injunction.
So we start sounding the hole, from the lake end, with the bayonet. It goes easily in as we follow the hole progressing landward. We followed the easy dirt toward the base of a big tree and then we got a “thud” sound from a half depth plunge and the bayonet starts shaking back and forth as if someone were on the other end. I says, “Riley let me see your hatchet”. And down, and around, we dug to a very big, very surprised, snapper. So big in fact that he was too heavy to carry safely by his tail far enough away from my leg. As we wanted more than a “you should have been there” tale back at the camp site a new transport method had to be invented. A kid on each leg was not going to last long and dragging him seemed a little harsh. So (and I still have trouble believing this but it’s what I remember) I hoisted him, his top shell to my skull top, his head to my back, and off to our encampment the proud hunting party marched.
The turtle weighed in at a bit over twenty pounds. Somebody came up with a bath tub for outside the Nature Hut and there the prize resided till Camp’s summer end. I dropped him off in a nearby river and that was that.
I fudged slightly on this story and tracked Riley down with Google. He was still in New Madrid and went way past the Chamber of Commerce from the stand point of the Missouri historical establishment. What I didn’t do was ask him what he had in his pockets. However I predict with high certainty, Riley is rarely without the biggest Swiss Army knife ever made and a leatherman tool (ah technology!) very close at hand. The fundamental things really do apply as time goes by.
ML
5/18/07
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