PICAYUNE —
A month ago I wrote a column describing in lurid detail the Neill-inflicted deaths of several young hog-nosed snakes, commonly known Down Heah as “spreading adders.” This weekly column is syndicated in several papers and to readers throughout the South. I generally write a week in advance and send them out e-mail, but some papers publish on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, so when those editors come in Monday morning, mine goes straight to typeset. That can turn into a Blessing, as this past month, when a mid-week editor quickly e-mailed me back with an urgent warning. “Uncle Bob, a retired game warden told my husband that those spreading adders are a Protected Species; are you sure you don’t want to check that out before we run this, exposing even more of your hardened criminal background?”
As you can imagine, that kind of knocked me back on my heels, but there’s sometimes a saving grace built into the work of a writer as long in the tooth as me. “Is this Neill guy writing about something that happened yesterday, or twenty years ago?” It’s a natural question, and it happens a lot, I confess. I indeed had accidentally run over a baby adder while mowing the pasture; that brought back memories of other times it might have happened, even on purpose, including when my neighbor ran over a whole litter of baby copperheads with his mower. Perhaps I had written that column in remembrance of something that happened ten or twenty years ago. What’s the Statute of Limitations on spreading adder murder?
Well, if only one paper had caught the confession, it was probably best to go straight to the source: I drove over to the building at Stoneville where I recalled the last game warden office being.
It was no longer there, but a guy who works in that office now found me an old pamphlet that had a Jackson number on it. “I think the closest office might be over around Greenwood,” he opined, “if you want to drive that far.” I replied that I didn’t actually want to be in the physical vicinity of a game warden when I asked my self-incriminating question. I dialed the Jackson number from the parking lot.
A young man sounding about the same age as my Adam answered, named Adam Butler, who is obviously the State Expert on Adder Law. My first tentative statement was that I had possibly done away with a member of a Protected Species, and I wanted to know what the penalty might be, because I had to make up my mind if the deed I was confessing to happened last week, or twenty years ago, if that would be beyond the reach of said Statute of Limitations. He recognized my name and chuckled that he had read some of my books, surmising that many of my stories might have to do with olden days, even before they HAD game laws.
Then he went into the history of the hog-nosed snake, spreading adder, puff adder, and several Latin or Greek nomenclatures for the same critter. To ease my mind, he jumped right in with, “They are not protected, but they are classed as creatures of “Conservation Concern,” and that my method of execution sounded too much like an accident that could happen to any country homeowner. The boy knew a heap of stuff about spreading adders, and in my judgment he will go far in his chosen field of game law enforcement. I wish him well, and will ask for him by name the next time I need to call or visit the game & fish folks in Jackson.
When we finished on the subject of puff adders, I was very tempted to go the next step and ask him about the game-department status of panthers in Mississippi, since several times over the years I have crossed swords with various game officials over personal sightings of that predator — six over the years, one black, three within a couple of miles of my house here at Brownspur. Those non-Adams unanimously declared me to be a drunken fool who cannot tell a lion from a Puddy Tat. I was seriously tempted to shoot one (panther) and bring it for identification.
But that was a long time ago, back before the Statute of Limitations, Adam.
Columns
Whew, I didn’t violate game law
- Columns
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Hood’s ‘open carry’ ruling strikes important balances
Attorney General Jim Hood’s office issued an opinion this week that went a long way toward establishing some order and applying some common sense to what has become a contentious and confusing debate both for proponents and opponents of free exercise of the Second Amendment.
House Bill 2, which becomes law July 1, was authored and led to passage by state Rep. Andy Gipson, R-Braxton. Gipson has told the press that he believed the legislation was necessary to clearly define what a concealed weapon is under the law and to distinguish between “concealed carry” and “open carry” rights. But many law enforcement officers charged with enforcing the state’s “concealed carry” law and other contradictory statutes, the bill created some confusion and Hood’s AG opinion brought some clarity to the ongoing debate. -
The Loss of Trust
Amid all the heated cross-currents of debate about the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program, there is a growing distrust of the Obama administration that makes weighing the costs and benefits of the NSA program itself hard to assess. The belated recognition of this administration’s contempt for the truth, for the American people and for the Constitution of the United States, has been long overdue.
- Vocability Words can be both familiar and extremely confusing when taken from their usual context. Ask any wine enthusiast about legs, fat or bricks and they may assume you are speaking “Vinonese.” Ok — I made that word up; but the language of wine does indeed include legs, fat and brix which have entirely different meanings from what you might assume. Working with definitions from http://www.wineschool.com/vocabulary.html, try your basic knowledge of “Vinonese.”
- Vocability Words can set a tone for a situation, alter someone’s perception of an individual or group — in short, there is power in them. The Bible cautions, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue...” — Proverbs in 18:21, ASB. With that in mind, I will be focusing on words, some recently used and some obscure, to test the readers and build on what you already know. There will be theme weeks, for instance next week will focus on words involving wine — for no particular reason! So try your vocabulary skills with the following and see how you score. I’m always open to suggestions for material.
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A hard rain is gonna fall...
By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist
After disappearing during his term in office and bringing scandal to his family and state, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going to Washington, having won election to Congress. And that’s far from the worst story reflecting the current character of our nation.
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. - More Columns Headlines
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Hood’s ‘open carry’ ruling strikes important balances
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