Ben Misses All the Cool Stuff: A Post from Camp Scamp 2010

Can you see the deer down there?

Ben misses all the cool stuff.

I do not know why it was his unlucky fate on this vacation.  It wasn’t that he was doing anything wrong, per se.  It was just that he always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I am sure that he got tired of someone telling him that he “should have been there!  You should have seen…”

… the salamanders. 

Missing the salamanders is an especially unfortunate event, since Ben loves salamanders. He has posters of salamanders; he has read books about salamanders.  But he had grown tired of hiking up the trail to Anna Ruby Falls, then back down the trail from Anna Ruby Falls- about a mile, up and back, on a pretty steep path. To limit his complaining, we let him head back down the trail while Allen, Jenni, Libby and I lingered at the Falls, watching the cascading water, taking pictures, and wondering out loud watching waterfalls and taking pictures of them was fun (my theory is that people are attracted to water because they are trying to find their way back to the primordial soup from which they emerged at the dawn of time- but, hey, that’s just me).

On our way down, Jenni wondered if we could find any salamanders along the path.  She found a good place to hunt:  on a big, wet, slimy rock next to the trail.

We saw little brown heads.   Then we saw more little brown heads, peering out from the rock. And then, like those pictures where you have to make your eyes all out of focus and fuzzy so that, all of a sudden, you can see the 3D picture in the pattern- there they were.  Little salamanders, big salamander, all over the rock.  Our ‘oohs’ and ‘aahhs’ attracted a crowd, which we regretted, since people started coming over and plucking the salamanders off the rock to play with. (People:  leave the poor salamanders alone!  Don’t you remember “look, don’t touch?”)

Ben, who, as I told you, loves salamanders, was far down the trail.  We yelled, but he couldn’t hear us.  He was, needless to say, disappointed. This disappointment resulted in bickering with the other sibling, which resulted in one of the siblings kicking the other, which resulted in Mom hollering. But, of course, the siblings were back to being friends by the time we got back to the campground- which is how these things work in my family.

…the swimming deer.

A couple of days later, we headed out to Tallulah Gorge, near… well, up there in North Georgia somewhere.  This is one impressive hole in the ground, nearly 1000 feet to the bottom. I refused to go within 5 feet of the railing; Libby had to take me by the hand so I could look down the big hole, because I felt like the floor was falling down below me.  But the view was definitely worth getting all woozy over:  there were giant rock cliffs, and a river flowing at the bottom, hundreds of feet down.

Since we had been in the car for over an hour, during which time I assume that he must have consumed a quart of iced tea- Ben had to find the restroom.  Quickly. So he headed back down the path, away from the overlook, in search of the restroom.

Still clinging to Libby’s hand, I hung over the rail with Allen, Jenni, and Libby. Something was swimming in the river, traveling from one bank to the other.

“It’s a person,” one of us guessed.

“No, it’s a dog, I think,” said another one of us. 

When we all looked closer, we realized that it was a deer.  Way down below us, a deer was swimming across the river to the other bank. 

We didn’t know that deer could swim, and we had no idea why a deer would even want to swim across a river like that.  We were fascinated.

The deer finally made it, and hoisted herself up the bank, off to find– whatever interesting thing was on the other side of the river.  And that is, of course, when Ben reappeared.

A pattern was forming:  Ben leaves.  Something interesting happens.  We postulated:  if we keep sending Ben to the bathroom, what else interesting will happen?

We may try that.

Although Ben tends to miss some of the more extraordinary things in life, he often makes extraordinary observations about the more mundane things in life. “How did you miss that?” often becomes “Where did you come up with that?”

How to Tube the ‘Hootch: Another Dispatch from Camp Scamp

Author’s Note:  As I posted the last post, I realized that there are actually people out there who have never ridden an inner tube down the Chattahoochee River.  These people, of course, have been deprived and have obviously led a sheltered life.  I wrote this a couple of years ago, during our last vacation to Helen, Georgia, in the North Georgia Mountains.  Our whole great big family loves to spend the week together up there.  Allen first took the girls there years ago.  They loved it so much that they passed up trips to the beach and to Disney World to spend time up there.  The kids and I have become converts, too.  Our kind of fun up in Helen is to “tube the ‘Hootch:” to ride down the Chattahoochee River in inner tubes, all of the family (just 6 of us when I wrote this- we’ve expanded since then).  Here is my handy guide to tubing the ‘Hootch, in case you ever get up that way.

To tube the ‘Hootch, you put on your bathing suit, grab your push stick and your water shoes, pile everyone into the pickup truck, and drive down the street to the Cool River Tubing Company. You pay your fee- five dollars for the short run or the long run, nine dollars if you want to tube all day.  You line up outside the storage building, and pick up a big plastic inner tube.  You want it to match your outfit- so you choose blue, green, yellow. There are no pink ones, unfortunately- those are used by a competing company.  The kids then have to decide whether to get a kid-sized tube or a grown-up sized tube- of course, they always want the grown up size, even if they’re so small that they’re going to fall out the bottom.  And then you have to choose what kind of bottom you want:  hole or no hole.  Tubes with no holes are for those who want to keep their butt relatively dry and warm; the open tubes are for the daredevils who wish to brave the 70 odd degree water. If you have a tube with no hole, you have to decide how deep you want the seat. A deep seat can make a difference when you’re trying to push yourself down the river and over rocks- too deep a seat makes this a literal pain in the ass. 

You pick up straps to lash inner tubes together by their handles—they come in handy for roping in kids who cannot or will not manage by themselves on the ‘Hootch:  those kids that either goof off and ‘accidentally’ falling into the water, again and again, or who manage to keep getting stuck on rock after rock.  When I get tired of watching either spectacle, I usually grab the offender and strap them to my tube.  It’s more fun that way, anyways:  you have better momentum and an easier time getting over the obstacles.

After collecting your tube, push stick, life jacket, water shoes and straps, you head over to the school bus, give the employees your tube to load into the trailer, and climb on board with a ton of excited kids, old couples, young families, church groups, and one family that most definitely is not from Around Here and has never been tubing in their lives and asks all kinds of nervous questions of the other riders.

 You get trucked up the river a ways, and then dropped off by the side of the river with your tube and your gear.  You plunk your tube into six inches of water at the drop-off site.  You push your tube into deeper water, where there’s a good current. Then you plop into the tube and give yourself a shove, and you are floating down the river, somehow, because the water is not even a foot deep in some places.

On crowded days, like the weekend, there is a log jam of tubes on the river. I sort of imagine them as giant platelets clogging a blood vessel (what do you expect? I’m a pathologist). You get really friendly with your neighbors on the crowded days, as you bump into them, shove off of them, dodge their cigarettes (occasionally) and stick your feet in their faces.

On less crowded days, your family is strung down the river, in no particular order. The only given in this scene is that one of the kids will be at the end of the line of the family, flailing around in the tube because they’re stuck on a rock. 

You get to watch all of the different approaches to tubing: one guy has his head back and is dozing; two young lovers are hooked together and in their own little world; a kid is paddling along, somehow; a mom is herding all of the kids together with the pushstick, or she is floating in the back of her group, as the sweeper. 

You float down the river, past the hotels and restaurants and folks watching you from their tables, entertained by watching you try to push yourself off a boulder.  You try to dodge the fly fishers.

Along the way, there are a couple of trees that people have loaded with their chewing gum.  There is a collection of single flip flops nailed to a tree:  the tree of ‘lost soles’- get it?

There are rocks to maneuver around, and the occasional ‘rapids,’ where the water moves a little faster, and you may occasionally plunge a foot or two.  There’s a very deep spot on the river which serves as a swimming hole, if you’re brave enough to jump into the cold water (I’m not).

And then you’re at the end of the ride, behind Cool River Tubing Company. You jump into the water, hand your tube to the helpers, and climb a set of stairs back to dry land.  You get your land legs again, and head back to your hotel, all drippy wet and planning the next ride. Maybe the long run tomorrow. Maybe the short run again later tonight, if it doesn’t storm. 

Finding Enlightenment in a Fluorescent Green Inner Tube: A Letter from Camp Scamp

Well, I finally got my butt into an inner tube on the Chattahoochee River. Floating down the ‘Hootch in a fluorescent green inner tube, I wasn’t expecting to find enlightenment.  But I did.  I will share with you the insights which I acquired today.

1. Go With The Flow

2. Two Is Better Than One

3. You’ll Get There Eventually- Maybe Not How You Expected To

1.  Go With the Flow.  During the last few weeks at work, interspersed between looking at a million slides under the microscope and doing autopsies (and having the angry family members of said autopsy on the phone yelling at me), I fantasized about the Chattahoochee River.  I imagined the wonderful feeling of my cold butt floating down the ‘Hootch in an inner tube, the warm sun on my face. 

We finally made it to North Georgia, and to the Chattahoochee River.  The big white school bus took us down the road from the Cool River Tubing Company, and dropped us down by the riverbank.  We jumped off the bus, carrying our inner tubes to the middle of the river, and hopped in.

  Alas, my beautiful dream seemed to turn into a nightmare 200 feet down the river.  My tube was stuck on a rock and I couldn’t move.  After a few minutes of this unpleasantness, I took matters into my own hands.  I stood up in the river and tried to move the tube over the rock.  My feet slipped on the slippery river rock and tumbled over; one of my flip flops slipped off and began to float down the river. Someone caught the flip flop for me, and I tried to flip the tube back over. I slipped again. My hat fell off and into the water. I tried to catch my hat while not letting go of the tube-and my other flip flop slipped off. I retrieved my wet hat, righted my tube, and got the one remaining flip flop from the nice family that had retrieved it for me.  I flopped back into the tube, clutching my one flip flop, wearing a soggy hat and cursing loudly.

 The reality of tubing the ‘Hooch was nothing like the fantasy that I had so carefully preserved in my head for all of these weeks.  It sucked.

I heard a voice drift back to me from down the river:  “Just go with the flow.”  Words of wisdom, I thought.  Then I realized that it was Allen’s voice.  This pissed me off, because I hate it when he says something wise that I didn’t think of first. 

Despite the fact that I don’t like it when he’s right- and will usually do the exact opposite of what he suggests, just on principle- I went with the flow.  I stopped fighting.  And when I inevitably got stuck against another rock, I waited.  The water rushing past me freed me.  I didn’t push against the rock; I didn’t stand up and try to walk over the rock.  I just waited for the water to carry me around?    That was my first Universal Truth of the day.  The moment that you stop fighting , that you stop trying to push against an immovable object,  that you stop trying to control everything- that’s when the water picks you up and begins to take you down the river again.

2. Two are Better Than One.  Ben and I seem to be the klutziest, dorkiest tubers in our party.  If there’s a rock to get stuck on- we’ll find it. If there’s a big branch by the side of the river with a snake hanging off of it- we’ll find a way under it.  If there’s a spot in the middle of the river where there’s absolutely no current- we’ll find ourselves in it.

Our antics entertain and/or annoy the hell out of the other members of our party.  You can see them, watching us from down river, looking either amused or completely exasperated.  And it is embarrassing for Ben and me to be the only people on the river who just really can’t tube.  I mean, it’s a simple concept:  you sit in an inner tube, and you float down the river.  Yet… somehow we do a lousy job of it.

So, today, Ben and I strapped our inner tubes to each other with a thick nylon strap that the tubing company provides for such a purpose.  We were going to do this together.  Two crappy tubers should equal one decent tuber, I reckoned.

Certain members of our party believed this to be an idiotic idea:  two bad tubers hooked together would not equal one good tuber- it would equal a total disaster.

But we showed them.  Two are better than one.

An amazing thing happened. When Ben and I, tied together, approached the rocks that conspired to impede our path, Ben would boing into a rock and bounce off; this carried him  back and would slingshot his tube around mine;  he could then pull us both, albeit facing backwards, though the rocks and back down the river.  The Doubters could do nothing but look on with envy.

Safely down the river, Ben lay across the tube on his belly and paddled.  I sat back in my tube and pushed with my push stick.  And we got ourselves down the river, whooping and laughing.  And there was another Universal Truth:  it’s fun to go down the river, through life, by the side of the people that you love, one pulling the other through the rough spots.

3.  You’ll get there-eventually.  It’s going to take you as long as it’s going to take you to get down the river.  You’re going to get down the river when you get down the river, even when you want to get the hell out because it’s lightning.  You’re going to get down the river when you get down the river, even if the rest of the family is waiting for you on the side of the river, tapping their feet, checking their watches (they do that).

You may not get down the river by the straightest route, the fastest route, the easiest route.  You may not get down the river with your hat still dry or with both flip flops still on your feet.

But you’ll get there. And, somehow, it will all be ok:  that’s how you needed to get down the river. You needed to get down the river that way, so that you could think about Life and Universal Truths- and then sit down and write all about it. 

Camp Scamp 2010

It is time once again for Camp Scamp: our yearly foray into the wild, using the Scamp as our base camp.  Last year we headed into the wilderness of Southern Connecticut and New York:  facing giant lobsters and New Yorkers.

This year, we were supposed to attend Camp Scamp Canada 2010.  However, thanks to my not-so-careful reading of Entry Requirements for Canada and, worse yet, Re-entry Requirements for the United States (Passports?  You gotta be kidding!), that adventure ended before it began.

With three days to spare, we revised the Camp Scamp 2010 Schedule of Events. When work gets intense, my favorite escape is imagining my butt in a green inner tube floating down the Chattahoochee River; therefore,  a trip to the North Georgia Mountains seemed in order.  And then?  Head south to visit the family, and then…. Why not?  Drive clear down to the edge of the United States, and show the kids the Southernmost Point in the U.S. - Key West, Florida.  We were gonna have it all:  the cool mountain air and the warm Caribbean breeze.  Camp Scamp 2010 was going to be truly epic. 

Letters from camp are, of course, a summer tradition; I suppose now they’re emails, tweets, Facebook posts, text messages and Skypes from camp. But, at any rate, communications from camp are a key element of the sleepaway camp experience.

(For the definitive example of the genre, I refer you to Allen Sherman’s classic Letter from Camp)

What follows is a series of communiqués from Camp Scamp 2010:  the good, the bad, and the ridiculous.  Our Letters from Camp.

Denizens of Disney

A Helpful Field Guide to the Inhabitants of the Magic Kingdom

Dedicated to Libby, and to the poor souls standing in line for The Jungle Cruise on a 90 degree day in June

(Author’s Note:  the study of Magic Kingdom denizens has been a long and arduous process, encompassing hundreds of woman-hours, and thousands of dollars worth of tickets and Mickey Mouse ice cream bars.  I present this guide to help you, the reader, identify and more fully appreciate these creatures.  Please be advised that they are wild, and in their natural habitats.  Please exercise caution when dealing with them, both for your safety, and for theirs.) 

The Newlyweds.  Identified by their unique Mickey Mouse ears: the female’s is white, with a veil; the male’s is black, with a top hat.  Also wear new, shiny wedding bands and glazed looks.  If you’re not careful, you will knock them over; they don’t pay attention to their surroundings, only to each other (and have only rarely seen the light of day on this honeymoon).

The Foreign Tour Groups.  These seem to be a rarer species these days, for unknown reasons.  Beautiful creatures in matching orange t-shirts, led by a frustrated woman holding a flag and yelling to try to get their attention.  Usually harmless, but can occasionally clog major intersections.

The Stroller Commandos.  These creatures use a stroller as a weapon to advance themselves through the crowd, much like a battering ram.  They have apparently forgotten that they have a kid in there.

The People Who Rush the Gate of the Attraction and Nearly Cause a Stampede, Even Though the Show Repeats Every Eight Minutes.  Self-explanatory.

The Button People.  It’s their birthday, their anniversary, their family reunion, their first visit.  They are given a button by the cast members to advertise the reason for their celebration. You are obligated to offer them congratulations.

The Self-Appointed Entertainers. Small sub-population of teens and young adults, often drunk, who have decided that the park would be even more fun if they provided additional “entertainment.”  They scream like banshees in the Haunted Mansion, and love to enact dramatic sequences with the costumed characters that inhabit the park.  They find their actions hilarious; everyone else finds them annoying. ((hi mommy, I know your describing me here so…thank you for remembering :]))

The Photographers.  Will stop in the dead center of Main Street, causing a traffic jam behind them, so they can get the perfect shot of Cinderella’s Castle, or, more often, of their loved on in front of the Cinderella’s Castle.  Become extremely annoyed if you accidentally get in their shot.

The New Parents.  Will wait in the afternoon sun for 90 minutes so they can bring their child on Dumbo the Flying Elephant- a ride that takes approximately three minutes.

The First Timers:  Appear lost- because they are.  They have yet to figure out that the Magic Kingdom is arranged in a circle.

The Thrill Seekers.  Will spend the entire day running from Space Mountain to Thunder Mountain to Splash Mountain.  Love to tell everyone: 1. how many times they rode the ride 2. how much they screamed 3. how sick their friends got and 4. how SOAKED they got on Splash Mountain (OMG!).

The Parents Who Should Be Tied Up and Made To Ride “It’s A Small World” 100 Times in a Row.  It’s 10:30 p.m.  Their four-year-old is hungry/cold/exhausted and sobbing in the stroller.  The parents, however, refuse to leave the park until closing time.

The Kid That You Wish You Had:  Parking your car in the Dopey lot is exciting.  Riding the tram from the parking lot is exciting.  Looping through the endless attraction lines is exciting. You don't have to spend money on them to make them happy.

The Disneyphiles.  Recognized by their Goofy hats, Mickey Mouse t -shirts, Tinker Bell handbags, and lanyard full of trading pins. Excellent source of Disney minutiae, like where the closest Hidden Mickey is, or where the best ladies room in the park is (Main Street, behind the Crystal Palace, near the Baby Care Center).

The Gazillionaires.  Stay in the suites at the Contemporary- for two straight weeks.  Buy the $500 Mickey sculptures in the Main Street Emporium as souvenirs for their hired help.  Usually have a nanny in tow.

The Sitters:  Always male.  Will find a convenient bench in the shade and wait for the rest of the family to finish watching the show/riding The Mad Tea Party/finish yet another trip into a gift shop.   Also can be spotted on the People Mover in Tomorrowland going round and round and round….

The Strategists.  Plan the trip like a military campaign, with a set itinerary, Fast Passes, designated meeting points- and actual restaurant reservations.  Refuse to be deterred from “The Plan”.

The Person Who Only Wants to Ride the Haunted Mansion, and is Content to Walk Around and Eat Mickey Mouse Ice Cream Bars the Rest of the Day:  That’s me. 

About the author:  Dr. Smith has been visiting the Magic Kingdom regularly since 1975.  She still remembers the names of all of the “E” ticket rides- and actually knows what an “E” ticket was.  She is considered an expert (in her own mind) in Magic Kingdom sociology.

Long Island, 2010. After the Gulf Oil Spill.

I am writing this post from the beach in Southampton, New York.  The Halsey Neck access point to the beach in Southampton, New York, to be exact.  It’s a serene kind of beach:  it seems populated with thinkers and walkers and readers rather than body boarders and beer swillers and barbequers.  It’s not like the Florida beaches that I grew up with; it’s a more contemplative type of beach. A beach to simply look, and feel, and smell, and to think of nothing and everything, all at once. 

My kind of beach.

I’m sitting on the sand looking out in the water, and I am trying to imagine the salt water covered in thick, shiny, greasy masses of slime.  And I am especially thinking of another beach like this, far to the south, along the Gulf Coast. It’s another contemplative beach like this, where I used to sit and think of everything and nothing- like I am doing now; where I sat as a quasi-intellectual college student writing bad poetry.  Not much has changed- except I’m now a 41 year old quasi-intellectual adult writing bad blog posts along with the bad poetry.

Allen and I visited that beach a few weeks ago, down there in the Florida Panhandle, before all of this happened. It may have been a farewell visit; I suspect that it never will look like the way that it did in April.  What will all of that pristine sand and the clear green water look like covered in oil?  Will that fine white sand blow for miles down the empty beach and pile up in drifts?  Will there still be sand dollars buried in the sand?  I doubt that the sand will blow, or the sand dollars will stay alive, when the oil comes.

In April, the weather can be quite unsettled in the Deep South.  We headed down to our campground on the beach just as a line of severe weather was headed down the same direction.  We arrived in the late evening, and it looked like the worst weather had passed us by.  We were safe, in our campsite hidden behind the dunes.  There was nothing to worry about.

I woke up in the middle of the night.  The sky was flashing; I could see it even with my eyes closed.  Flash…flash……flash…flash. flash…FLASH…..flash flash flash…. The sky glowed greenish.  It was dead still.

 I have seen storms like that before in my life- the storms where the lightening comes so fast that the thunder can’t catch up, and the sky glows from all of the electricity.  They suck all of the air surrounding them inside- inhaling the atmosphere- so that you seem to be a in vacuum before the storm arrives. They are a living creature.

That storm lay off the coast, stalking us, and waiting to strike.  I lay there, feeling frightened and helpless. Our little cocoon of a camper suddenly felt thin and fragile. All we could do was wait….

That storm now seems to portend what was to follow.  We were fortunate that night:  the monster slunk back out to the open ocean and away from us.  This new monster- this oil from the broken well in the Gulf- I don’t think this one will retreat.  This one will not be content to sit offshore, menacing. This one is coming.

Like that night in the camper, I feel helpless today,  in the face of this oil spill, the dimensions of which I simply cannot get my mind around.   

Right now, the only thing that I can do is to ride my bicycle down to the shore in Southampton. I chose to not turn the ignition key in the car. 

Maybe this disaster will effect a change in the nation’s psyche.  Maybe we will consider consuming less fossil fuel.   Maybe some of those people who drove their luxury SUV’s down to the beach access at Halsey Neck Beach will leave them home, and ride their bikes instead – they can park them next to mine, in the nearly empty bike rack.  Maybe we could make our roads safer, so that the other type of “traffic”- pedestrian, bicycle- could travel without fear alongside the cars and trucks.

Maybe we won’t be able to kill this monster- but maybe we can stop a new one from being created.

St. George Island, Florida, and the rest of the Gulf Coast:  you are in my thoughts and in my prayers. 

Snakes Alive (2010 edition)

There’s (sort of) a new addition to our menagerie- the one that includes three cats, two dogs, I’ve just forgotten how many chickens, two fish, and one freshwater snail…

I’ve named our new addition Bob. I had decided, after numerous interactions, that he deserved a name. So Bob it was. And, now that he has a name, I feel somewhat protective toward him- which, for me, is rather unusual.

Bob is a snake. A really big snake.

(Above: one of Bob's cousins, from the UGA snake website)

Bob made his first appearance last summer, shortly after the rattlesnake incident. Having just recovered from that ordeal, I was sitting on the patio in the evening, and watched something slither toward the
grape arbor. It was dark brown, dingy, and fat. Water moccasins are dark brown, dingy and fat. But, after the rattlesnake incident and the resulting trauma that it caused, I was in denial. “That is NOT a water moccasin… that is NOT a water moccasin…” And then it slithered under the grape arbor and out of sight. My denial mechanism asserted that I hadn’t really seen a snake at all, much less a water moccasin. And so the incident was forgotten.
______________________________________________

“Be careful when you go in the garden… there’s a giant cottonmouth in the garden! Eek!”

That was the text message that I received two weeks ago from Jenni. I had been in that garden the day before, on my hands and knees, pulling weeds. While a cottonmouth was stalking me, apparently.

The possibility of a large water moccasin roaming the yard was not amusing, so I headed over to Lowe’s to buy a bag of snake repellent (yes, they actually make the stuff). The problem was, what if I put down snake repellent, and he was trapped inside of the yard, rather than outside?

Of course, Jenni also said that it may be a non-venomous water snake, as they look very similar. However, I prepared for the worst- that I had a cottonmouth in my yard- and hoped for the best- that it was really just a water snake.

I got the opportunity to make the distinction, up close, feeding the chickens that evening. I went out to the carport to bring the chickens a scoop of chicken feed- and there he was. Hiding under a table. He hadn’t spotted me, thank goodness.

With my usual calm and thoughtful demeanor when confronted with a reptile, I jumped up on a bench and screamed for Allen. I also began swearing. Loudly. In Spanish (in times of great stress, Spanish seem to be the best language in which to swear, in my opinion).

Allen came out. He got too close to the snake for my comfort, as per usual. So I started swearing at him in Spanish.

We stood there- me on top of the weight bench, and Allen by the table- trying to figure out what we were dealing with.

Dusky color? One vote for cottonmouth.
Thick body? Not so sure. The vote could go either way.
Big triangular head? Definitely not. One vote for water snake
Slit-like eyes? Hard to tell. Wasn’t planning on getting a closer look.

General opinion was leaning toward ‘water snake.’

“Let’s catch it” Allen suggested.

“Are you nuts?” I said. “You don’t know that it’s not a water moccasin! You just think that it’s not a water moccasin! You have a hypothesis that it’s not a water moccasin! You have not proven that it’s not a water moccasin!”

I headed for the back porch and waited for Allen to get bit and die, since he refused to listen to me.

“Come here!” He finally said. “I have him pinned with a broom.”

The snake was trapped underneath the whisk of the broom. He was curled up, and casually sampling the atmosphere with his tongue. He looked pretty placid.

“He doesn’t look particularly dangerous,” I said. I crept a little closer to him to get a better look. If he were a water moccasin, I doubt that he would be this docile; he probably would have tried to swallow the broom by now.  
I snuck even closer, and got a couple of pictures of him on the camera phone to post to Facebook, of course, so our herpetologist friends (believe it or not, we have more than one) could identify it for us.

“Do you want me to let it go?” Allen asked. “I can dump him in a bucket and take him away somewhere.”

“Nah- let him go.”

We let him go, just like we did with the rattlesnake. As icky as I find them, they are magnificent creatures, in their own way. And he’d clear the yard of vermin- a nice perk.

Allen took off the broom. Bob hauled ass.

I watched very carefully where I walked the rest of the night.

Bob has decided that he has nothing to fear from us, so has decided to carry on his business with us around. Last week, he was in the lawn, sunning himself and happily slithering around the yard.

Bob may still scare the crap out of me, but I am learning to peacefully coexist with him. Out on the carport last night, the dogs and I heard a rustling sound from between some boxes. Out slid Bob, trying to gain some traction on the concrete and get over to another set of boxes. “Oh, thank Goodness!” I thought.” It’s not a rat; it’s only Bob.” He must have been hunting frogs and rats, which seem to love the comfy carport.

Of course, the kids have raises a disturbing possibility- what if Bob is really Bobbie? What I Bobbie in hunting food for her babies (do they even do that?) What if there are about to be ten more Bobs in the yard? I am not sure I’ll be able to peacefully coexist with… Eleven Bobs???

“Aye! Mi Madre!”