Snakes

[Corm]

Last fall my wife and I were picking berries up in back of my place. We have one patch that is pretty thick, and my wife doesn't like to wade in there to far, so she was directing me (cause that's what women do...) to where she saw some good looking berries. When I stuck my hand in there to pluck out a couple of them, a garter snake that was up in the berry bush slithered across my hand. Whew! I came out of the patch so fast I was just about hovering over the ground. My wife was laughing so hard she could hardly breath. It took me a minute or two before I could see the humor in the situation...

Corm

 

[8NTX]

When I was around 12 years old, my family went on a camping vacation in Arkansas. There were lots of small grass snakes around, and my 7 year old brother and I caught one and put him in a minnow bucket with some pine needles in it so he would have a nice bed. This was on the morning we were packing to head home. I pulled Dad aside to ask him if we could take it home and keep it as a pet, and he reluctantly agreed but said "don't tell your mother".

We had one of those big old station wagons with lots of room in the back. Well, about half way home, my brother and I were riding in the back and we decided to see how our pet was doing. You can guess what happened. No snake in the minnow bucket!/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif Well, after discreetly looking around for it, we told Dad we had to stop to pee. We told him about the missing pet, and of course my mother wasn't going any further until we found the snake and threw it out. We tore that car up looking for the snake but he was nowhere to be found. I think we were about 4 hours late getting back home. After 2 hours of searching it took an extra 2 hours to convince Mom to get back into the car. Took about 20 years for her to see that story as being funny though. Never found him either.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

When I was in jr high I was a little bit of a character. One of my attention getting tricks was to catch garter snakes and take them to school. This was back in the days when you couldn't wear a shirt without a collar to school.

I'd place the snake in my shirt about even with the uppermost button. Then I'd walk up to an unsuspecting young lady and put my arm around her bud like. Of course about the time she'd turn to talk to her bud the snake would come up for air just above the collar and below my ear.

About that time it was kewl to smoke. I didn't. It was almost as kewl to have matches. If you had matches then even if you didn't smoke you were neat because the only person more popular with the smokers than the person with the cigs was the one with the light.

Our school had a basement where they had the wall lockers. More than once I watched a young lady or two get to ground level with one maybe two steps.

I carried a penny pack of wood matches in my pocket. The difference between my matches and those of the other kids was mine only had two matches...........and one scorpion.

Our house faced east. So about sun up the old blue belly ugly yellow desert scorpions would come out to pick up the early sun. They were a snap to catch and with a quick swipe of a razor blade they became just ugly instead of being ugly and mean.

One time I tossed my trick pack of matches to a young lady as she was heading into the ladies room there at the school. The room was evidently full. But not for long.

 

[Bird]

Harv, sounds like some of the things I did. When I was a junior in high school, I took a little snake to school. The librarian also supervised the "study hall" and she knew I had the snake and wondered what they felt like. I was sitting next to her holding the snake and she'd start to touch it, it would move, and she'd jerk her hand back. Then she turned to speak to someone else and I just laid the snake across her arm. I think the entire school heard her screams; I had no idea that gal could be so loud.

Then when I was working in the Dallas Post Office, one of my co-workers was going to college and mentioned needing a snake for a biology class, so I took a small one to work day for him (so small I had it in a cough drop box in my shirt pocket). Someone suggested I show it to a particular one of the truck drivers (whom I didn't know except by name), so I walked up behind him with it in my hand and called his name (didn't get within 10 feet of him). He was kind of cornered, and when he turned and saw that snake, he started screaming, climbed over gondolas of mail, and tried to climb the wall. Of course, I turned around and walked off. He sat down, asked someone to call a cab for him, and went home. Claimed to have had a heart attack and didn't come back to work for 3 days. I later learned that he was about to be fired (which was nearly impossible to do in the Post Office anyway), but after that episode they were afraid to fire him (afraid of a lawsuit), so it turned out that I saved his job./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif I later had occasion to be his supervisor for awhile and he and I got along just great and he did his work well for me./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

At any rate, I haven't played with snakes since then./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[Bird]

Thought about you this morning, Neil, when I went into my shop building and found a 38" snake skin just inside the overhead door. I haven't seen a snake around here in a long time, but apparently one went in there to shed last night (maybe he's still in there)./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif