PICAYUNE —
Mowing the pasture after the remnants of Hurricane Isaac spurred a regrowth of what had before that looked to be dead Bermuda grass, I was having to go slow because of the height of the grass, and saw a telltale disturbance ahead of me as I got to the end of a round and prepared to turn around at the Mammy Grudge ditchbank. I am not bad about mowing snakes, but have learned through unfortunate experience that mowing BIG snakes does not always terminate the targeted serpent — matter of fact, sometimes it antagonizes said target into being the aggressor while sharing a ride on the mower with the bent-on-mayhem driver. I therefore slowed my machine of destruction to see what was emerging into the mowed ends.
This was a small snake — I mean, like eight inches long and not as big around as my little finger. It was brown, a little darker than the usual copperhead, but this was a juvenile anyway. I steered around the snake to check it out; I try not to kill the non-poisonous ones, unless they are big enough to make you hurt yourself if you walk up on one unexpectedly. If this was a brown garter snake, he was safe from me.
But it gave itself away: when I circled, the little serpent took offense, coiled up, and inflated its head and neck to threaten a strike — it was what’s known Down Heah as a “spreading adder,” or “puff adder,” but is pictured in the herpetologist books as a “hog-nosed snake.” It grows to be a thick dark snake, with the unusual ability to inflate its head and neck like a cobra (which we have so few of Down Heah) and thereby scare the bejeebers out of an unsuspecting stroller — or turkey hunter!
Okay, a non-poisonous snake which can fake being a real viper is in the wrong business to be practicing at Brownspur.
I mowed him, no regrets.
Only a few rounds later, I glanced at the swath I had cut on the previous round, down on the end by the Swimming Hole, and lo and behold, there was another dead-and-newly-mown juvenile puff adder, the same size. I did not mourn, but when I got back to the ditchbank, detoured briefly to check the final resting place of the first baby adder. Its mown remains were still there.
As I was getting into the short rows over by my neighbor’s fence, I once again witnessed the disturbance in the weeds ahead of me, and slowed my mower. A third juvenile adder broke cover in a mad wriggling dash for the nearest cedar tree — maybe word was getting around in the resident adder family — but he wasn’t quite fast enough. However, this time I dismounted to confirm the victim’s identity, then made a cautious circle on foot around the rest of the pasture, to see 1) if there were any more baby adders about the premises, and 2) if there was any sign of Daddy or Mama Adder, who might be overwrought by the loss of their three kids — I had to assume that this was prima facie evidence of an Adder Hatchout.
Three times in my life I have experienced the unfatal heart trauma of being unexpectedly threatened by a close-enough-to-strike puff adder. Two of those times, when the large dark hissing snake was not in clear view, it took what seemed like a half hour to get situated to roll away from the strike (I had been napping on the riverbank) or to get my hand on a loaded shotgun with which to dispatch at close range the coiled snake. No fun, especially to a guy who has been struck four times by the real poisonous snakes anyway!
On the other hand, my son and another of The Jakes once captured a fair-sized spreading adder, named him George, and determined to raise him for a while in a glass aquarium (dry, of course) on the back screen porch. I thought George was taming quite well until the morning the screen atop the tank was ajar. We never found George, but maybe I mowed his & Miz George’s progeny!!
Opinion
Were these Miz George’s progeny?
- Opinion
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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. -
Analysis: Miss. supes discussing county budgets
Mississippi supervisors gather on the Gulf Coast this week to talk about roads and bridges, economic development, water resources and other issues.
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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.
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Mary Dorsa Guttry
Mass of Christian Burial for Mary Dorsa Guttry, 90, of Carriere, Miss., who passed away Friday, June 14, 2013, will be held Wednesday, June 19, 2013, at 2 p.m. at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church.
Visitation will be Wednesday, June 19, 2013 from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. at McDonald Funeral Home.
Burial will be in New Palestine Cemetery under the direction of McDonald Funeral Home. -
We all need to be prepared for disasters
When my father was alive, he left New Orleans only two times in his life. The first was to serve his country in Korea. The second was when the federal government evacuated him to San Antonio in 2005.
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How much spying needed for security?
Ever since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have vacillated between their desire for safety and their desire for privacy.
The federal government, whose spying on its own citizens has been further exposed this past week, says Americans can’t have it both ways. -
State lags in early child ed
The bad news is that Mississippi remains the only state in the South without a state-funded early children education program. Only eight states nationwide do not invest in some form of early childhood education and only 11 states don’t have a state-funded pre-kindergarten program.
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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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