{"id":3776,"date":"2012-10-04T06:00:57","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T10:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=3776"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:41","slug":"snakes-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/snakes-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Snakes Alive!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes we find adventures – or inspiration for fictional adventures – in the common occurrences of every day life.\u00a0 Since this is Halloween month, I’m going to share with you some ‘creepy’ stories from my life.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My buddy Mike, who lives in Alabama, was weeding in his yard the other day.\u00a0 He reached into a clump of plants and found a large snake skin.\u00a0 Fortunately\u00a0that snake skin was uninhabited!\u00a0 He has a lot of copperheads around there and copperheads are\u00a0just flat-out mean!<\/p>\n

\"king<\/a>
Photo of and from Brian O’Hare – Snake Wrangler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My bro, Brian picked up a new golf partner, fortunately it was just a King snake.<\/p>\n

I found\u00a0a snake skin\u00a0hanging off a hickory tree beside the house a while back.\u00a0 From the size of it I\u2019d say mine was from a black snake \u2013 it was pretty big.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen black snakes around here get 6\u2019 to 8\u2019 in length.\u00a0 I came across one just the other day while I was mowing the grass \u2013 he was only about 4 feet.\u00a0 He hopped and wriggled comically to get away from the mower then slithered through a chink in the skirting under the trailer.<\/p>\n

Note to self: next time I have to go under the trailer for something; MAKE A LOT OF NOISE!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not that I\u2019m skeerd of snakes, mind you; I used to eagerly anticipate my turn to \u201cwear\u201d the pet python during science class, and worked hard to keep my grades up so I\u2019d remain in the rotation.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had pet garter snakes, grass snakes, sand snakes.\u00a0 But as I\u2019ve gotten older, somehow the urge to play with the snakes I come across has diminished.\u00a0 I\u2019d just as soon that our paths did not cross.\u00a0 Especially those with long pointy teeth.<\/p>\n

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I appreciate the fact that most snakes around here are actually beneficial in that they help keep the vermin population down, and I won\u2019t go out of my way to kill one I know to be non-venomous.\u00a0 But sometimes, their own pretenses can prove a little too convincing.\u00a0 I once came across a yellow-bellied king snake under a rose bush I was trimming.\u00a0 He coiled up and waggled the tip of his tail at me.\u00a0 He looked more than a little like a rattler too \u2013 just didn\u2019t have that triangular head.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have my Field Guide To All Snakes in my pocket and couldn\u2019t be sure, so I whacked it with a shovel\u2026 just to be sure.\u00a0 When I looked it up and found it was just a King Snake I felt guilty about killing it.<\/dt>\n
<\/dt>\n
<\/dt>\n
<\/dt>\n
I’ve learned to look a little more closely, but to look closely from a safe distance.<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes we find adventures – or inspiration for fictional adventures – in the common occurrences of every day life.  Since this is Halloween month, I’m going to share with you some ‘creepy’ stories from my life. My buddy Mike, who lives in Alabama, was weeding in his yard the other day.  He reached into a … Continue reading “Snakes Alive!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-3776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-muse","tag-adventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21584,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3776\/revisions\/21584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}