27. Dead in the car

 We traveled west to northern New Mexico on a trek charted by Shaving 2

Snake road hunting inclines one toward watching for fauna, squished and otherwise, when driving and the twelve hundred miles from Birmingham to Red River presented a panorama of road kill that I attempted to share with the shavings.

 In the beginning I would wait until close enough to identify what we were passing and would shout out something like “dead badger”.

This proved an unsatisfactory pedagogical approach as the result was always spinning heads in the back seats and yelps of “where, where?”

In the interest of more timely alerts I changed to “dead on the left (or right or in the road)”.

This worked pretty well and produced a round table discussion after each sighting regarding just exactly what was sighted. While not designed for high speed identification, Flattened Fauna (R. M. Knutson, 1987) might have been of some use.

On the return leg of the trek we stopped by a small highway curio shop. There was a Navajo (E.B.) lady and her son in the parking lot and I got a small painted pot. Inside the shop I found, among other things, rabbit pelts for $2.00. I would have bought one simply based upon the reasonable price but an animal pelt, of any sort, was simply a gag opportunity that I could not let pass by.

With the rabbit pelt inside my shirt, we all piled into the van, and headed east. About 5 minutes down the road (when there were no nearby cars) I yelled “Dead in the car”, waited until somebody said “What?” (Just to make sure they had processed the alert) pulled the rabbit pelt out of my shirt and fired it back over my shoulder into the Shavings.

Instant family life classic.

ML

8.14.12

26. Rita II on patrol

Rita II on patrol:


July 10, 2011 at Choccolocco Creek ( 33.559474,-86.124079)

25. Shaving 3's first knife

Shaving 3 has always been law abiding by nature. He strove to find out what the “rules” were so that he could follow them and assist others in doing the same; more leader than authoritarian. Occasionally, however, events resulted in a tension between his orderly instincts and other deep desires.

And so it was at an Applebee’s when he was around 5 years old. We went to visit Grandma sawed-off from time to time; Saturday PM mass then Applebee’s for dinner. As he was no longer sitting in a booster chair, the waitress naturally gave him his own place setting which he unwrapped and found therein a spoon, a fork and a…KNIFE!
Now he knew knives were not to be played with (read touched) but here he was with his own KNIFE handed to him by the ~ controlling authority. So he nudges me, points to the knife and looks up. I knew he was thrilled with this opportunity to have his own KNIFE and as it was not pointed or seriously serrated I told him it was ok; he was old enough. He’s always had a soft spot in his heart for Applebee’s ever since but I don’t think he remembers why.

Shaving 4 wants a Bowie knife. He knows full well that it is more-or-less useless in almost all situations (Seraphim Falls notwithstanding) but he’ll probably get one. After all, a knife is like a rope. You don’t know what you’re gonna need it for. You just always need it.
ML
7/6/2011

24. Gun fire in Shades Creek; two out of three ain’t bad (but sometimes one’s enough)

Shades Creek runs from just west of the Birmingham race track to the Cahaba River. Though not one of the creeks I imprinted on, I’ve been in it for over half my life so that makes it… “home creek”.

It is most accessible to most in front of the Brookwood shopping mall where it appears to the many casual observers as a largish drainage ditch. It takes about two minutes of concentrated watching before the creek’s true nature begins to manifest. By the five minute mark you realize you’re looking at something like those National Geographic drawings –“Life in the You-Name-It” – where every possible animal is drawn sitting about 12 inches from each other.

Snakes, fish (bass to two pounds, carp to eight pounds, and bream so beautiful that I’ve seen the species featured in a German aquarium fish book), mink, muskrat, beaver (I never actually saw the beaver but there was once a dam which, making the most of available materials, had a shopping cart in it), groundhogs, kingfishers, great blue herons, hawks, at least four species of turtles (some individuals way bigger than you’d think possible give the depth). I keep waiting for an alligator to show up.

Mostly I’ve fished there. It’s the perfect place to go if you’ve got to go but don’t want to make a full blown expedition out of it. The only down side is the occasional critic, driving over one of the four bridges, who sees you fishing in a drainage ditch and offers a crude evaluation of your prospects. I make an effort not to be taking a fish off the line with such geniuses watching so as leave them in useful ignorance.

All the wildlife notwithstanding, early Shades creek does flow through an urban setting so there are modern human artifacts, mostly golf balls. However, one early, drizzly, Sunday morning I look down and there’s a gun, looking like a moderately realistic, but surely toy, version of a .22 revolver. The toy hypothesis was ongoing as I picked it up – the true weight masked by being underwater – but once in the air it was clearly a real gun.

So without a moment’s hesitation I cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger. These were two mistakes on multiple levels. The first level was the noise, which was loud, my being basically in a sound chamber given the surrounding 30 ft high backs and a concrete bridge almost over my head. The second level had to do with the likelihood of the barrel being full of silt (think exploding gun); fortunately not. The only thing I did right was the ol’ “never point a gun at something you don’t want to shoot”; i.e. not my foot or a rock.

When my pulse settled down I unloaded the gun and started warming to the find. Demonstrably functional, I had a free pistol with only one missing grip. So I stuck it in the snake bag and fished on.

Before leaving the creek, I got to wondering what that gun had been up to previously that led to its getting tossed in the creek. Recalling a drug trial (jury duty) emanating from the general vicinity it occurred to me that the gun may have been up to “no good”; and did I want said gun turning up in my position? I further reasoned “no I did not”. So I drove to a nearby police station, and with the gun still in the snake bag, proffered it to a policeman getting out of his car. We went inside where I explained to them how I came by the gun and did not want it. At first they did not know exactly what to do (the base story being a little unusual) then one said “We can impound it”. I says “Sounds good to me”. For months I kept waiting for a call from a district attorney, who having done some ballistics, knew exactly what the gun had been up to and where was I at some particular time & place. Never happened.

Yea, there’s more in Shades creek than critters. I once found one – yes one – skin diver’s flipper. Bet there’s a story goes with that.

ML
12/17/2010

23. Sawed-off Sportsman sees “the light”

Wisdom holds that you need to be careful holding your breath when skin diving. Adventure holds that you use the tricks that let you hold your breath a long time. The main trick is hyperventilating until your faces gets tingly before going down. As I understand it, in non-diving mammals, the breathing reflex is triggered by the buildup of CO2 while in diving mammals their brain monitors O2. The advantage of the latter strategy is that the animal does not pass out while underwater; the disadvantage of the other approach is thus manifest for a “non-diving mammal” that dives anyway. The second trick is to go ahead and let your diaphragm do breathing-like movements; just keep your mouth closed. You can live through using both of these tricks while sitting in bed because if you pass out you wake up and record the last number you remember seeing on the stop watch (4 min, 30sec, Tallahassee, 430 Walker Street, about 1970).Doing this underwater has more problematic possibilities.

As I recall the situation, it was summer after our first year in college. Dave and I were doing some sort of work on a private swimming pool and decided to have a contest to see who could swim the farthest underwater. As noted before, one of my famous powers in high school was breath holding. I went first and planned on leaving him with no possibility of matching my submerged lap swimming – this competition being after a big lunch of tuna fish sandwiches which probably contributed to what happened next. I’m not sure if the wet suit bottom I was wearing had any effect.

So off I went. I remember 3.5 laps in the pool. Dave’s side of the story, being conscious longer than I, was more detailed. He said I touched the pool side on lap 4 and then just stayed down. His first thought was that I was trying to be funny so he waited a while before going down to see what I was doing. What I was doing was breathing water in and out of my mouth. He tried to get me out at the near deep end but couldn’t, so he pulled me down to the shallow end and out of the water whence he a) began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, b) got only gurgling sounds, c) flipped me over and lifted me in the middle, d) out poured a lot of water, e) then back to mouth to mouth. [In truth he owed me one life saving as in the past he had stuck a dart in my back, almost blinded me with a microscope light and pushed me off a cliff at Watts Bar Lake…but I digress.]

My “side” (aka almost the “other side”) of events was different. I experienced and remember clearly, as if being trapped in a dream, that I knew I was trapped but couldn’t get out …. and it was not pleasant. I also remember seeing a large distant light centered in what was passing at the time (along with me) for the center of my visual field.

My first this-worldly recollection was not being able to see but being able carry on a conversation with Dave. I said, reasonably enough, “what happened”. He said “you drowned”. Now this response came as big a surprise as if I walked up to you, tapped you on the shoulder, and said “you drowned”. In favor of his case, however, was the last thing I remembered outside the ‘dream’ was 3.5 laps underwater in the pool.

As I began to be able to see, I noted I was wearing the bottom half of my wet suit, and as the emergency people were on their way, my number one priority was to get the wet suit off so as not to have to deal with questions about why I was wearing half a wet suit (still a good question).
Official help showed up, gave me a few whiffs off the oxygen tank, and departed.

My mother’s response to the tale was to take me to the doctor the next day but there seemed to be no lasting problems (I heard that!). She remained nonplussed as to our parting exchange. I said “thanks”. Bailey said something along the lines of “no problem”. Although, that being the day of Yancy Derringer, it remained a standing joke that Dave, having saved my life, now had to follow me around with a shotgun as Pahoo did for Yancy (this traditional Pawnee obligation – forever guarding someone whose life you saved – always seemed the reverse of the debt). In truth, Dave got the worst end of the deal; despite his heroics getting into the newspaper he had bad dreams for some time thereafter……I just had the memory of “the light”.

ML
12/16/2010

22. Splinter 2.1

I saw the movie Auntie Mame long ago but seem to remember the ending. Mame’s brother died leaving her to raise his son through many ensuing adventures. In the final scene she is leading her nephew’s son up a spiral staircase saying “….all the things I will show you”.

Splinter 2.1, a.k.a. Amy Grace, weighing in at 7 pounds, 11 ounces (lucky numbers) arrived a few days behind schedule. I speculate she was waiting upon the return of her other grandfather from the Amazon. “Amy darlin’” will likely be shown a thing or two or at least have the grace to listen to the grandpas’ tales of adventure.
ML
11/30/08

21. Boy Scouts cause warning

I wasn’t a particularly accomplished Boy Scout and the only reason I made 1st class was my mother said she would make me get rid of my snakes if I didn’t. So I made 1st class and quit (although it was back in the days when you had to learn Morse code and decipher a flag signaled message so it was not a non-accomplishment). Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great group with a great tradition that teaches a plethora of things worth knowing – more widely held in high esteem than any other organization I can think of – it simply doesn’t encourage extensive pursuit of the “sawed-off” path.

But about the time Shaving 3 was four I joined again…..as a leader. Now they were not going to let me start a “Sawed-off Sportsman” merit badge but they had a few on the books that were close enough, e.g. Reptile Study. The key requirement – the one that couldn’t be fulfilled by studying the merit badge book – was to keep a reptile or amphibian for thirty days and record noteworthy events. This was clear official sanction to lead a band of kids up a creek catching water snakes.

Water snakes had several distinct advantages. First, they are easy to find in large enough numbers. Second, they eat like pigs (fresh or defrosted fish). And third, they are a snake’s snake…as in “mean as”.

Scout Master Bill was all for this activity as he was a ‘go the extra mile’ (sometimes two) scout leader and a merit badge that required catching fierce snakes fell across the enough-extra-effort-line to meet his standards. It was also an activity, as it sometimes turned out, that really brought a scout’s whole family together if the little darling got loose. I attempted to discourage this turn of events by explaining that “the snake is somewhere in my house” did not meet the “keeping” requirement.

Some merit badges are well suited for summer camp. The only problem with reptile study was the 30 day keeping requirement because summer camp was only one week so almost nobody ever got Reptile Study Merit Badge at summer camp. Consequently, the standard plan was to go snake hunting about a month before camp so the kids could walk in the nature building with their 30 day record in hand. I once had the opportunity to see this plan play out. I was assigned no particular day time duties one Monday so I followed some of our scouts to a first merit badge class where the leader scout explained that nobody ever got reptile study at the final award ceremony because you have to keep one for 30 days. Pearson lays his folder on the bench and flipped it open like a poker player revealing a royal flush. The leader scout was duly impressed…but I digress.

These snake hunts were always on weekends so citizens were around – especially when we were more or less in their backyard. Boy Scouts in uniform are generally extended the presumption of “good deeds” so I told the kids that if anybody ask what they were doing just say “Troop XYZ taking care of your snake problem Ma’am/Sir”. One such ‘opportunity’ arose as we marched back from a successful trip along a popular walking path near Shades Creek. Anticipating queries from passersby I told the kids to deliver the ol’ “taking care of your snake problem…” and then open the bag and let the people see what we had. This was in early June.

Later that summer I was in the same general vicinity and noted a very nice wooden sign had appeared the substance of which was “Warning – there are snakes around here”. I figure word, or actual presentation, of the bag full of snakes to several fitness walkers made it to some Mountain Brook city planner who figured giving constituents a heads-up didn’t have a downside.

The snake warning sign has lately been replaced by “interpretative” signs – kingfisher currently. Nice bird but without the same cardiovascular stimulation, to augment the point of the walking, as “snake warning”. In the manifest interests of public health it’s probably time for another June snake hunt near the path.
ML
10/25/08