Swamp Rat

That's where I grew up y'all. 

I mean I lived in a house...went to school and church in buildings but, this is where I spent at least half of my childhood. It's Lake Cascade. We lived on Cascade Dr...a small neighborhood, that came off the truck route, made a loop along one shore of the lake and then back out.

This is where we played. When I was little, I got at least two whoppins for goin' down there without supervision. We found a dead gator down there one time...he'd been shot and hacked up. There was a baby gator that lived in one the pools around the lake. Seemed like he stayed on the same stump for a year. 

Of course, the place was the natural habitat of our arch enemy, Satan's charm bracelet...

.

I guess we just tried not to think about him.  There was a little island in the lake that was said to be so covered with Cotton Mouths that if you looked hard enough you could see it wriggling. Maybe it was a defensive mechanism...mentally we put them all out on the island. I did watch a fella kill one in the water with a bow. That was pretty cool...back to hell you go.

There were big, high banked ditches...like canals that would connect some of the pools with the lake...we never went in those. That was a strip of black water running between 6ft  walls of roots and holes. We did swim in the lake though. Out towards the middle of the lake there was a homemade diving platform built in group of cypress trees. One of my fondest memories is being out there with my brothers and their friends. I was still wearing the bubble (an egg shaped piece of styrofoam with canvas straps that chaffed and dug into my under arms)...so, I must have still been pretty little. They were trying to get me to jump off into the water. At my size it looked like were were 50ft in the air. They finally bribed me into it by promising that I could be the first to kiss Daddy when he got home from work. It was quite a race to meet him at his car in the evenings...with my tiny legs I didn't stand a chance.

One day, me and a buddy of mine come up on a fella that nearly drowned. His canoe had turned over and he couldn't swim. We helped him in the last few feet. It had to be a strange scene...two ten year olds draggin' a grown, gasping man out of a foot and a half of water. The most absurd part was that, except over sink holes, the water never really got that deep. He could have bounced off the lake bed from 100 ft out. 

It dried up every couple of years...or drained. Sink holes would drain it. The other side of the lake was near wilderness. It was crisscrossed with dirt roads...and pocked with sinkholes. Sink holes are just creepy. A perfect cone, about 150ft across and down to a pool of jet black water. Every once in a while they'll crack open in a populated area. Gainesville had a couple of big ones open up in the middle of town.

You can see the waterline on the cypress but, obviously this was taken after a long dry spell.

In its Glory.

The little cinder block house we lived in is gone now. In fact almost all the houses are gone now. The airport bought up most of the neighborhood years ago. It wasn't a fancy place to start with and now it's gone back to wilderness. 

Probably overrun with *&^^%% Cottonmouths.

"I Tell You Whachya Don't Do."

"You don't fire a gun in Bogalusa Park."

Satisfied he had our attention he sat down on a milk crate...got 'im a dip of snuff and settled in for story time.

"Man ever' cop in Washington Parish swarmed on that park."

Given where we live and the time of year...there's only one reason that you'd fire a gun in a public park and it become a humorous anecdote.

That's right...it's our arch-enemy, Satan's lei...



The Cotton Mouth.

"I was down there fishin...standin' on that old fountain. You know they took that fence down from around it. So, I was standin' on it castin' in the creek. When I got ready to go...that's when I saw 'im there on the concrete. Ghad D...and ever'time I'd move he'd strike out toward me."

These snakes are mean y'all...they have no flight response.

"There was a fella across the creek...I hollered but he couldn't hear me. After about 20 minutes I said damn this ...pulled out my pistol my pistol and put an end to it."

"Then all hell broke loose...WOOO WOOOO WOOO. It was John Shelly got to me first."

"David. Did you fire a gun in the park?"

"Yes I did."

"Why?"

"I reached down and pick up that snake by the tail and held it up."

"Don't do that again."

"Well keep the damn snakes outta the park."

I don't know if he caught any fish.

Biographical Tid Bit #5

Once again, ,Satan sends his hand-puppet....



I was almost killed Saturday by this while looking for a golf ball.

The fact that I was one more three put from probably offing myself is besides the point.

It wasn't even my golf ball. As usual, always thinking of others...rarely thinking of myself, I was trying to help my partner locate his wayward t-shot.

Being selfless isn't easy...and it's obviously not without risk but, I won't be deterred.


I tried to post a link...to the last time one of the devil's house pets tried to kill me...but obviously, Mrs. Perpetua, I am hopeless.

http://flimsycups.blogspot.com/2010/11/biographical-information-tid-bit-1.html

EDIT


I've been waiting for Nat to chime in but...looks like he may be too chocked up. As a concession I have reprinted one of his all time classic posts. This came in response to pictures of a snake eating a frog....

Nay, not mildly; not a smidgen or a tad, but *HIGHLY* unnecessary - a deviant deviation; a violent violation; an abominable abomination!

Thank you.

That is all.

Let the matter rest here and no more be said of it as all that can be said of it has been said of it and it is now a matter forever closed. Good day to you Sir.

Forsooth man: let it be or be damned!

I SAID GOOD DAY SIR!

Where Were You...

...when you read that I almost got killed by a Cottonmouth?

http://flimsycups.blogspot.com/2010/11/biographical-information-tid-bit-1.html

Today is the 10 month and a day anniversary of the publishing of that emotionally charged and bone chilling post.

How have you dealt with the shocking realization that the web came so close to losing the author of this blog...before the internets was even known to the general public?

Were you able to say a prayer of thanks and move past it...or have you been obsessively replaying the event in your mind just to make sure I did actually survive unscathed?

How has your life changed since that moment? Do you now cherish every word of every post as if it was the last. Do you read like I was dying?

Do you panic if a few days pass without a post...terrified that Satan's hand puppet has come back to finish the job?

Or was the emotional turmoil of it all just too much, too much to process and, unable to cope, you've cut your internet off completely.

Tell us your story. Make it an emotional performance...prance and preen. Solipsize the event so we can all have a better understanding of how to deal with it.

You don't know who you might be helping.

Please acknowledge a moment of silence before hitting respond.

Do Not Feed the Alligators.

A little late for that. This joker sees a person he hears a dinner bell and makes a bee line. That's the problem with feedin' 'em.

When I was a kid we spent a lot of weekends at St. Marks Wildlife Refuge in Florida.



We would use these tiny little brine shrimp as bait for fishing. Scoop 'em up with hand nets from the pool where that picture was taken. It didn't take long for the gators to appear. You'd dip your net in the water and a head would pop up as you pulled it out...Some bigger and more disturbing than others.

I wonder how much of this The Sister remembers. I know she remembers the time that a bull gator growled at us. I bet she remembers me riding all the way back to Tallahassee with a three inch splinter in my big toe picked up during our frantic run across a wooden bridge to get as far away from that sound as possible.

What? Yeah. We were barefoot...of course we were.

Anyway, like I said I never could catch any fish at that place...so, I crabbed. Tie a chicken neck to the end of a string, throw in the water, give it a minute, pull it out...crabs. The problem is gators like chicken necks too. It doesn't take 'em long to associate people with food...humans cause hunger pangs. That's when an otherwise disinterested creature becomes an eater of dogs and small children...so don't feed the gators! Last time we were there, crabbing had been banned.

Don't worry about feeding the snakes...



They seem to be managing.

Satan's hand-puppet there is no bigger round than your index finger. He's devouring a frog...at an excruciating pace. The frog was starting to balloon. We looked for something long enough to catch and fling the snake over to the gator...to snuff out that little devil and put the poor frog out of his misery but we couldn't. Beastly.

Nature's a &*^&^%%%(**&^^! You won't find any more passionate conservationists than you will in The South...hunting and fishing are so deeply engrained in the culture...but, you won't find a lot of support for abstract, misty eyed concerns about the "environment."

When your towns aren't being erased by hurricanes...you're dodging tornadoes, gators, and snakes. The Sister knows two little boys that have been bitten by Cotton Mouths, one in the backyard, the other in his own garage, this year...terrible. Sometimes around here it seems like a fight...and not a fair one (ask the folks in Tuscaloosa).

Don't wanna be overly dramatic about it...we aren't struggling to survive...at least not most of the time :).



Most of the time it's just a beautiful place.

Tid Bit 1 1/2

I went running with the Sister this morning.

She say's I've gotta get that picture of the devils hand puppet off the front page... "Nobody wants to see that."

That's just her way of saying..."Erik I can't bare to think of life without you and every time I read that story, every time I think about how close we came to losing you..I have a panic attack."

Because I am nothing if not a loving brother...I'll do my best to bump it down.

Here's something pleasant to ponder.



It's not nearly flat enough....I'm gonna keep painting this over and over again until it's a couple of triangles and circles...party with the paint brush like it's 1910.

Biographical Information - Tid Bit #1

This is the boat landing where we used to live.

It's also where one of these...



tried to kill me.

You think I'm bein' dramatic? Take another look at that beedy-eyed devil. You think a second passes durin' the day that he's not focused on killin' somethin'?

It's a long story...made longer by the fact that I know nobody would believe it if told in it's entirety. All you need to know is that I was knee deep in the water...bein' a humanitarian...tryin' to massage a fish back to life.

I heard they did a study recently tryin' to prove that Cottonmouth's weren't aggressive (the point of which, even after it was explained, still escapes me). They dangled this mechanical arm out in the water tryin' to provoke these these vicious snakes...and got nothin'...crickets. I guarantee you if they had dangled a dead bream out there on that arm them moccasins woulda swarmed on it like hornets.

I've seen what happens to a human leg when one these gets hold of it too...poor fella was black, but his leg was the color of a school bus and big around as a ripe cantaloupe.

Anyway, I survived unscathed. I got outta the water like a ninja and he was more focused on the fish anyway.