Back in Alabama, being a snake is a capital crime. Call it all that Baptist fixation on the Garden of Eden and sin and such, but if you're out with your Daddy's .32 revolver that you purloined from behind the truck seat, and you and your buddy accidentally almost step on a rattlesnake, well, you are morally obligated to empty the cylinder at it while screaming hysterically. That snake was either reduced to a fine pink haze in the summer air or escaped and lived to be 359 years old, I'm not sure which.

And that's where the phrase "Snake Justice" comes from.

My favourite interpretation for the acronym has always been:

People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.

Never goes over very well.

You have a refreshing and humorous style of writing, that makes me smile and laugh while you deliver simple, strong truths. I am glad I happened upon your blog some time ago.

Thank you :)

Unilove

You're a far better person than I Preacher. I woulda slammed the door and never gone back out. Then I woulda started packing up while calling the realtor. In my version of 1984 they would use snakes, and they don't have to be big diamond backs either.

I'll never forget the story my first-aid instructor told me about the time he was bitten by a snake.

He was clearing some scrub on his property with a whipper-snipper when he felt a smack on the back of his calf. Thinking at the time that it was just something kicked up by the spinning wire, he kept working for a while until he started feeling a bit tired and decided to take a break and go get a drink.

Sitting in his kitchen, feeling quite tired and sweating away decided to have a shower and started peeling his overalls off. When he got down to his calf he saw the two little puncture marks, and the damp patch in the leg of the overalls where most of the venom has been soaked into the material, and realisation set in. "Oh, crap!"

His wife (also an ambulance worker) immobilised his leg with an inflatable splint, bundled him in the back of the car and set off to the hospital, about 40 minutes away.

The memorable part of the story is that the air-splint had a slow leak in it, and the valve was up near his groin. Thus, passing motorists were treated to an unusual site the three times his wife had to pull over to the side of the freeway, climb into the back seat and blow the splint back up.

i like snakes, i used to catch grass snakes for fun when i was a kid
and if i came across a poisonous version on my porch my first impulse would be to go steve irwin on its ass and capture it alive and do a whole relocation thing... this would no doubt get me bit, resulting in a painful lesson to not play with poisonous snakes
well thats what id like to do but id more likely just step out of reach and stomp my foot a couple times to get it to slither off, i dont want to die of snake posion lol

Well, don't have kids so the parental overload to kill the snake isn't there. I just shoo it away. Now the dog, that is different. Same story, different characters. Rescued dogs, many vet bills. More than I like to count have been euthanized in my arms. But will I keep bringing in those living faces, the "least among us," and save them from certain death? Yep.

...and I bet you do to.

Ha! Too dang funny. You do have a way with words and stories, bro.

Peace.

This reminds me of the time my brother and I were probably 5 or 6 and found a snake in our sub-basement (which we called the "dungeon"). We went screaming up the stairs to tell our mom, who immediately grabbed a meat clever and marched down there. We sat on the stairs in complete awe as we watched her hunt it down and hack it to bits. That was the day I decided that my mom was totally kick-ass!

I grew up in the country (on the other side of Comal county from you, in fact), and I hunted and fished as a kid. We also skinned, gutted and processed all the venison that we shot (most hunters these days gut it and take it to a processing plant to be made into frozen white-wrapped things). So, I have a pretty clear understanding of a line between animal and human life.

But I also have pets that I and my family love dearly. Our oldest dog is becoming infirm in her old age, and we're just waiting for some ailment to strike her that will put us in a similar dilemma as you. It doesn't help that most of the suburban vets seem to draw their line in a much different place than I would like to (needless to say, recommending the spending of large amounts of money).

Sorry I don't have any answers or wisdom to offer. Just sympathy. Been there, done that. Or am there, doing that.

Regards, Stan

Regarding vegetarians.

Vegetarians are worse than carnivores. They eat plants, the most defenseless lifeforms on this planet. Plants are alive, they move, they sense their surroundings, they reach for the sun. Plants are just slow, they move according to a different temporal measure. So vegetarians are eating the slowest, least offensive life forms on planet earth. Sounds a bit cruel to me.

A friend and I agreed recently, that all animal lifeforms are insane, and plants are the only reasonable lifeforms on earth.

When I was living in Thailand, I came across several snakes. Thankfully, I grew up in Texas and knew that if you saw a snake you run like Hell (preferbly not toward it), so one morning I was about to leave my house and walk to work when I saw this big snake (it has gotten bigger over the years as I tell this story) on my front porch. No way I couldn't go out the back door, since I didn't have one in this house (Hey it's Thailand, and I was lucky enough to have a regular toliet rather than a squatty potty so you take what you can get. I rather have a toliet rather than a back door). Anyway, either I was going to be held hostage in my own home or I would have to do something. Being held hostage was getting boring because all I could do was watch MTV Asian version (it's so so much worse than MTV USA version) or sleep. After a few MTV Asian commercials about Durex condoms, I decided to get out one of my meat cleavers to go hack to death. Snake lost.

Second time I saw a snake was when I was on my motorscooter in Thaliand. I decided to run over it instead of wipe out. Snake lost.

Third time I saw a snake was in Arkansas. I woke up and there was a big snake (it gets bigger every time I tell the story) slithering under my bedroom door going to the main area (I prayed to God and Sweet Jesus that snake did NOT sleep with me that night, but only God knows). Anyway, I was screaming like Hell and had to call my dad on his cell phone (mind you he was upstairs and couldn't hear my bloodly screams) and he came downstairs and saw the snake. Anyway, we tried to call animal control but they were not there. Had to call police and they came out and found the snake coiled up in the coils behind the refrigerator. Since we were in a small town and not much goes on there, this incident actually made the newspaper. "Police responded to an intruder". Snake was the intruder. The newspaper article went on to say that the snake was caught and released back into the woods. Unfortunately (or maybe fortuantely for PETA's sake), they didn't say the snake was put into the woods DEAD. The policeman chopped the snake's head off with a pair of trimming shears.

Thanks for bringing up old memories!

Then there's the time I was writing a sermon at the kitchen table in the trailer-parsonage of my student pastorate. I reached backward to get a spoon from the silverware drawer and found a large snake had crawled up the pipes and wrapped itself several times around the plastic tray containing spoons! Yowza!

Then there's the time I was writing a sermon at the kitchen table in the trailer-parsonage of my student pastorate. I reached backward to get a spoon from the silverware drawer and found a large snake had crawled up the pipes and wrapped itself several times around the plastic tray containing spoons! Yowza!

We had a little rat that we spent tons of money on. When we moved from New Orleans to Seattle, we had to hire a company to fly her separately. Then she started having problems with pneumonia and was on antibiotics for the second half of her long (for a rattie) life.

My poor little Gato. I miss her.

My only encounters with snakes growing were with small gardner snakes in Western WA. Yet, I still had a great fear of them. I love the run like hell advise but I am convinced that the ONLY good snake is a dead snake.

So my only advise to those wanting to avoid poisonous evil creatures is to move up to Seattle or Portland. 9000 feet up in the Rockies works as well.

Blessing,

Bill
bill.finley@gmail.com

I am sorry, but I do my part for the pet population and have the cat or dog fixed. I have the basic immunizations done and a check up now and then.

Now, I did spend a grand on a cat that ate some foam and had his stomach blocked up. That was not a lot of fun and I swore I would not do it again. Of course the cat did it again. I spent 3 dollars on a can of pumpkin pie filling, let the cat eat it (it is sweet, they love it) and then let the fun begin. It worked. MUCH CHEAPER my friend...

Vets are like Doctors, they perscribe the most expensive treatment (as you are learning) and they push all the latest and greatest things at an astronomical sum, but in the end the simple things usually work best.

Things get complicated when you have three children. Or any children, I suppose. Good parents are going to HAVE to have a financial margin set aside for child emergencies. My own family has had two major medical events in the last few years that have cost us thousands of dollars. Some we had. Some we had to borrow.

But what if we were so extended with caring for pets that we couldn't care for our children? My point is, pet ownership is a responsibility. Don't have them if you don't have some money to put into their health. But also realize that pets have a limit. Our bird has reached hers, I'm afraid. We took her to the doctor. He changed her diet. We'll give her the new food. But at some point, the bird lives a bird life. And birds die sometimes. You can control life and death with small animals to a certain extent with money, but not completely.

Finding wisdom here is a challenge.

I think Sharon Olds said it best:

Forty-One, Alone, No Gerbil

In the strange quiet, I realize
there’s no one else in the house. No bucktooth
mouth pulls at a stainless-steel teat, no
hairy mammal runs on a treadmill—
Charlie is dead, the last of our children’s half-children.
When our daughter found him lying in the shavings, trans-
mogrified backwards from a living body
into a bolt of rodent bread
she turned her back on early motherhood
and went on single, with nothing. Crackers,
Fluffy, Pretzel, Biscuit, Charlie,
buried on the old farm we bought
where she could know nature. Well, now she knows it
and it sucks. Creatures she loved, mobile and
needy, have gone down stiff and indifferent,
she will not adopt again though she cannot
have children yet, her body like a blueprint
of the understructure for a woman’s body,
so now everything stops for a while,
now I must wait many years
to hear in this house again the faint
powerful call of a young animal.

Poem: “Forty-One, Alone, No Gerbil,” by Sharon Olds

So the night I read this I totally had a dream in which I was at our Presbytery camp and there were snakes everywhere and I was just telling kids "If it has a triangular head, run away!" That's all I remember about that dream. While normally snakes in dreams are supposed to signify change or something, I think in this case it's me reading blogs too close to bedtime....

There is always a mixture of emotions; frustration, guilt, embarrassment, love and concern when our pets need medical care. As a veterinarian I saw this all the time. I've thought alot about this over the years -and probably have more to say on this topic than any of you really wants to hear. But the short answer is this: God loves and cares about every animal God has created; and so it is good and right for you and I to love and care for them too.

Our first dog, my blogging dog, went yesterday. The agony of watching her decline and wondering when it's time to make the call is still very fresh. But we did the right thing, both yesterday and eight years ago when we brought her home.

We have a cat on whom we spent over $2000 when she had a spinal cord injury about 8 yrs ago. The good news, after 3 months she recovered almost fully. We've had to put down my wife's 17 yr old hound and 2 18 yr old cats over the last couple of years. It doesn't get any easier. We keep saying: No More...but last Labor Day a bony kitten showed up on the doorstep, and wouldn't leave. Yep, he's a part of the family now, and has picked up from the hound the position of the "thief"...taking things off of tables hiding them all over the house.

At the hospital I worked @ in Florida we usually saw two types of snake bites: 1. Construction workers clearing scrub and pines for new house or road construction. (You haven't lived until a scrub rattler drops into the cab of the bulldozer.) 2. Drunks being, well, drunks: playing catch with snakes(!) or trying to be helpful, helping a snake cross the road.

Last summer I was backing out of my drive when I noticed my neighbor getting into her car, which was parked under a carport. Unknown to her, a couple of feet above her head hung a four foot long moccasin. In horror I rolled down my window and shouted at my neighbor to "Watch out for the snake over your head!" She turned and stared at me for a few seconds as she absorbed the meaning of my warning. Finally, out of the corner of her eyes she sees this snake anchored in the carport's rafters reaching out towards her. She screams, ducks, runs into a support post (which almost dislodges the snake), spins around and falls on her butt away from her car. Then she scurries backward on hands and feet, too scared and too hurried to get back up and run. I wish I could have caught her reaction on video - I could be $10,000 richer by now.

By this time I was out of my car and running over to help my neighbor stand up. She was white as a ghost, and I wasn't too happy about being that close to a viper myself. "What am I going to do to get that snake out of there?!" she asked. Sometimes being a man is a bitch, because I had to pretend to be calmer and more sure of myself than I felt. I had to act like a real man and offer to rid her carport of the unwanted guest.

I went back to my garage and got a shovel (for chopping) and the swimming pool skimmer pole (for reaching). I had the unique distinction of having the only red-neck indoor swimming pool in Butner. It was an inflatable pool I'd bought from Wal-Mart. The only level place I could find to erect the pool was in my garage. My car had to stay outside, but I could boast that my pool was shaded, and if the garage got too hot, I had a window air conditioner to cool things down quite nicely. I could even shut the garage door and go skinny-dipping if so inclined - but I wasn't. I never set foot into that pool, only my daughter and grand-son enjoyed it. But I digress....

I went back to the neighbor's carport and used the skimming pole to knock the snake down. It was already ticked off because it was being attacked by the birds who lived in the nest it was robbing. When it finally fell to the ground, it started towards me! The neighbor took off across the street and I ran back to my car. The birds continued to dive bomb this pissed off snake and it turned away towards my neighbor's house seeking shelter. My neighbor screamed, "Don't let it get up under my house!", so I got out of my car and stole carefully back to where I'd dropped the shovel in flight from the snake. Keeping myself directly behind the snake, I stole up from behind and stabbed at it with the blade of my shovel. It spun and bit at the shovel, which I immediately dropped and ran away from. Once I felt sure it was pinned under the shovel, I came back and picked up the shovel again and used it like a Ginsu knife at a Kyota Chinese restaurant.

I scooped up the pieces of the snake and took them to the back of my neighbor's yard, tossing them across a path that led into the woods. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I took my instruments of death back to the garage and walked across the street to assure my neighbor that the snake was indeed dead and would not be hanging above her car any more. I went back inside my house for a cold Diet Coke with Lime and then walked back into my neighbor's yard to have one last look at my handiwork.

The snake was gone. Not one piece of him could be found. It had only been ten minutes since I'd killed the thing, but there was no evidence that it had ever been thrown onto that path. Perhaps buzzards had witnessed the murder of the snake and saw where I'd hidden it's body. But in my mind at that point was a story my uncle had told me when I was a child about a joint snake that could grow back together even if it's parts were scattered. I don't know if there is such a thing as a joint snake, but I didn't wait around to see if a snake with a limp was going to charge out of those woods. I beat a hasty retreat and went to work. Haven't been to my neighbor's path since then.

DMC (Dirty Movie Critic)

Just be certain to consider your dog's quality of life. As hard as it was to do, I have had to have two of my "best friends" euthanized. In order to do so, I had to be willing to put their welfare / well being before my own desires, my breaking heart. Even though one dog has been gone fouteen years and the other a year and a half, I still miss both of them terribly. Still, I know I did the right thing for them.

-g.