Snake Charmer

by bdunn on May 15, 2013

in Critters, Farm

We get snakes aplenty in the yards around our “main” home here on less than an acre butting up against the banks of the Brazos River. Wildlife abounds in the wide green strip of trees and vegetation along the river, and that includes reptiles.

The Polka Farm, out west toward Austin, has a slightly drier climate, completely different vegetation, mostly oak and cedar woods, and only a seasonal creek and pond. The previous owner said he’d only seen two or three snakes in the several years he had the place, and until yesterday I hadn’t seen any myself, although the other side of the critter coin is that I’ve never seen a scorpion here along the Brazos, while the farmlands have lots of them.

I went out to the farm to mow yesterday, as the grass in a small field full of pecan trees was really overgrown. I rarely wear boots when mowing, but had a premonition and put on a tall rubber pair.

The snake sprang out of the tall grass in the middle of the field after I’d made a few passes on the tractor and was starting to cut the brush around the pecan trunks. It was a big beauty as far as copperheads go, at least the length of a yardstick and maybe as much as 40 inches, which is pretty long for one of these characters. It also looked like it had shed its skin, as the colors were vivid – triangular deep copper alternating with a bright tannish-pink.

The copperhead headed my way, and we met at the tree trunk I was about to trim. It got there first and tried to find a hole or some opening along the base of the trunk, but there was none. I turned the wheel hard to the left and mowed right up against the trunk, but looking back I saw the snake had flattened into the crease between tree and ground and ducked the tractor blades. I swung around for a better angle and tried again. Same result. Twice more, and the snake still stayed under the spinning steel.

I stopped for a second while keeping an eye on the serpent. I thought about riding back to the barn and bringing a machete or hoe, but the snake would probably just take off. So I lifted the mower unit with a foot pedal, then turned a dial lowering the blades from 3.5 to 2 inches. Then I started up and roared around the tree again. The copperhead raised up to consider an escape route while the tractor circled the tree, then tried to flatten out on the ground as the mower swung around, but the lower blades caught it in the middle of the body and pulverized it quickly and completely. Not a trace of the beast was left.

I was glad it died painlessly. I generally like snakes because they eat things that cause humans a fair amount of misery. I know a few people who will not harm any snake, and will catch and relocate the poisonous ones. My choice has always been to kill poisonous snakes on my land, because there’s too much potential damage to friends, family and animals to risk leaving them, and they’re risky to catch. Bosco, our catahoula hound, went head-to-head with a copperhead a few years ago and took a glancing bite to the throat, which swelled up like a grapefruit. Just this spring a neighbor down the road from us stepped on one while walking barefoot, and was hospitalized with a very nasty bite.

So while I appreciate their place and purpose, I advise all poisonous snakes either not to trespass, or leave your venom at home.

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More From The
Pretty Damn Sad Department

by bdunn on May 13, 2013

in Be Afraid, Government, Verbatim

First we have IRS officials going after groups whose ideas they disagree with. Now this:

May 13, 2013
Attorney General Eric Holder
Department of Justice
Washington, D.C.

Dear General Holder:
I am writing to object in the strongest possible terms to a massive and unprecedented intrusion by the Department of Justice into the newsgathering activities of The Associated Press.

Last Friday afternoon, AP General Counsel Laura Malone received a letter from the office of United States Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. advising that, at some unidentified time earlier this year, the Department obtained telephone toll records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to the AP and its journalists. The records that were secretly obtained cover a full two-month period in early 2012 and, at least as described in Mr. Machen’s letter, include all such records for, among other phone lines, an AP general phone number in New York City as well as AP bureaus in New York City, Washington, D.C., Hartford, Connecticut, and at the House of Representatives. This action was taken without advance notice to AP or to any of the affected journalists, and even after the fact no notice has been sent to individual journalists whose home phones and cell phone records were seized by the Department.

There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-
month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.

That the Department undertook this unprecedented step without providing any notice to the AP, and without taking any steps to narrow the scope of its subpoenas to matters actually relevant to an ongoing investigation, is particularly troubling.

The sheer volume of records obtained, most of which can have no plausible connection to any ongoing investigation, indicates, at a minimum, that this effort did not comply with 28 C.F.R. §50.10 and should therefore never have been undertaken in the first place. The regulations require that, in all cases and without exception, a subpoena for a reporter’s telephone toll records must be “as narrowly drawn as possible.’’ This plainly did not happen.

We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news. While we evaluate our options we urgently request that you immediately return to the AP the telephone toll records that the Department subpoenaed and destroy all copies. At a minimum, we request that you take steps to segregate these records and prohibit any reference to them pending further discussion and, if it proves necessary, guidance from appropriate judicial authorities. We also ask for an immediate explanation as to why this extraordinary action w
as taken, and a description of the steps the Department will take to mitigate its impact on AP and its reporters.

Given the gravity of this situation, I look forward to your prompt response.

Sincerely,
Gary Pruitt
(President and CEO,
The Associated Press)

With Big Brothers like this, who needs enemies?

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Free Flow

by bdunn on May 13, 2013

in Kids, Writing

My long-term writing project has not been going well lately.

I’ve been doubting the veracity of my work. I’ve been questioning my abilities. I’ve been wondering if I have anything really worthwhile to say. I’ve been cynical about my chances of finding a publisher when I’m finished. In the midst of this self-recrimination, my production has slipped rather badly.

My 9-year-old daughter, meanwhile, decided a few months ago that she would write a book of her own. In fact, since then she has started a second book. She is filling up notebooks with ideas, story lines and her own illustrations.

I overheard her talking to her mother the other day. “Mom, what’s it called when a writer can’t think of anything to write?” she asked. “That’s called writer’s block,” her mom replied.

“Well, I have the opposite of writer’s block. I have writer’s too much.”

I need to take lessons from that girl.

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Out of the Blue

May 7, 2013 Metaphysics

The Bible is, needless to say, filled with stories in which God speaks, sometimes at length, to the protagonist. Yet today, I suspect even steady church-goers would look askance at anyone who told them he or she took some action because God told them to. Thus it is with some hesitancy that I admit in [...]

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Wrath of the Buzzard

April 25, 2013 Critters

Having planted several figs, two peach trees and two rows of blackberries at the Polka Farm, I find myself driving out there from here in Richmond about once a week to make sure the young fruit trees have enough water. I didn’t have to haul any equipment out there this week, so I drove the [...]

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Spring Rollout

April 16, 2013 Art

Recent view from around the garden and farm (click photos for larger versions):

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When Evil Stalks The Cities

April 16, 2013 Metaphysics

I’m writing today in order to stop myself from reading the endless reports on the bombing of the innocents at yesterday’s Boston Marathon. The authorities have not yet identified the particular tools of the devil responsible for the atrocity, and thus media outlets are left to endlessly update and repeat the extent of the deaths [...]

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