August 15, 2020

 This past Wednesday was a traumatic day.  I know everyone has a snake story, and having lived in the woods for the past 44 years I have several.  Here are some.  Shortly after we moved into our house we had the concrete floor poured in the garage.  That night a snake decided to slither in on the fresh concrete.  I watched for an hour and a half and he finally crawled out of the garage.  Skip forward a few years when our kids were little, I happened to glance toward our fireplace and thought the kids had been playing with a long bow and had laid it in the corner by the fireplace.  Then it moved.  Not knowing what kind of snake it was I put the kids up on the kitchen table so I could deal with the snake.  It just so happened that in that corner on the floor was a tray with rat poison pellets.  The snakes tail was twitching and shaking that tray so we first thought it was a rattlesnake.  Turned out to be a scarlet king snake.  Then there was the time I was going to rake the leaves in the yard.  I started in one spot and uncovered a snake.  I moved to another spot and uncovered another one.  So I decided to rake in another spot and uncovered the third snake.  I then decided to burn the leaves and grass too.  By the way all three were small green snakes.  Fast forward several years.  Jason was headed to Millsaps college in Jackson, MS.  We had propped open the garage door as we were loading up everything he was taking.  As I walked into the house I noticed the last 6 inches of a tail going under the door and into a sofa that was waiting to be loaded.  We searched all in the sofa but could not get the snake to come out.  I stayed up all night waiting to see if he came out, but he never did.  They decided to take the couch anyway figuring the snake was not in there.  So they loaded it on the truck and drove the 5 hours to Millsaps, up two flights of stairs into their apartment.  The next morning they found the snake in their shower.  Of course they said it was a cottonmouth.  Not real sure about their ID.  Skip forward several years.  We added a swimming pool in the back yard.  Finished in December so the next spring even before the water was warm enough to swim in, a small snake decided to swim in it first.  Since then we have had snakes in the pool quite often. Usually they are small, about 12 inches.  Until about a week ago when the one below was in the pool.  I was in the pool floating around and glanced into the filter and it looked like something was in there.  I had failed to check the filter before I got into the pool.  I will not make that mistake again.  As I went to remove the cover this snake came out:

This is an eastern Kingsnake.  By far the largest snake in the pool yet.  That brings us up to last Wednesday.  I took the dog out in the backyard to do his business when he starts barking.  I quickly noticed that he was squared off with a large kingsnake.  Trying to get the dog away I grabbed the garden hose and started squirting the dog and the snake.  I got the dog away and kept squirting the snake until he crawled under our backyard fence and into the woods.  Meanwhile the dog goes back to where the snake was.  Then I hear him yelp and looked and this is what I see:

I quickly got the dog into the house and checked to see if he had been bitten.  Luckily the snake did not bite him.  Had he been bitten he would probably have died.  The snake is a timber rattler.  In my excitement of trying to get the dog away from the kingsnake I never even saw this one.  I now think that the kingsnake was going to make a meal out of the rattlesnake and we broke that up.  It is possible that the kingsnake had already wrapped around this snake and was in the process of killing it when we disturbed it.  That would explain why I did not see it to start with.  There is now one less rattlesnake to come back into my yard.  The traumatic part is that this occurred right under my birdfeeders where I stand to fill them up.  I had just used the weedeater under the feeders the day before.  Now I'll be uncomfortable going outside for a couple of weeks and be very careful looking all around the yard.  I do not fear the snake I can see, it is the ones I can't see that I am really afraid of.  Being partially color blind, snakes are sometimes hard for me to see.  Until next time....

July 27, 2020

     I have not posted in a while because it seems like our life has come to a standstill.  Since the last post we have stayed home and only going to the store for food.  Our days are spent indoors mostly because it is so hot here.  We are thankful that we have a pool and spend a lot of time in it.  We have made one trip to see our son and his wife and one trip to Virginia to see the grand kids.  We are waiting for the weather to cool off before we go camping again.  Even though the camper has air conditioning it is just to hot to go hiking.  I'm not sure about other locations but the ticks have been so bad this year that we decided to stay out of the woods.  Amy still has lingering effects from lime disease that she got several years ago. 
     We finally have the leaks around the chimney fixed, we hope.  Waiting on a really hard rain to know for sure.  Now we will begin replacing the ceiling and wall we had removed to try to find the leak.  I say we, but I am pretty much worthless when it comes to doing work.  Bursitis and arthritis in my shoulders limit my physical ability right now.  Surgery to fix the problem is not going to happen anytime soon because of the virus.  As it spreads in our state, county, and city. we now see it affecting families of our friends.  We will just sit around here and not get out.  We have almost everything we need.  Of course the garden I tried to plant this year was a total disaster,  Not being able to use the tiller meant the grass and weeds just took over.  Also I think using seeds that were several years old was part of the problem.  Next year it may do better.  Until next time...

March 20, 2020

     Saying I am behind on posting is an understatement.  So I won't say it.  Since October we did go camping, but it was not what we expected.  The RV park was very crowded.  Campers were parked right next to each other.  So close that we could not even let out our awning and could not sit outside.  To top it off, there were 3 solid days of rain.  Jason and Shelly had planned to come meet us, but due to the rain we instead went to their house for a night. 
     Thanksgiving came and went as well as Christmas.  We had planned to go see the grandkids the day after Christmas, but that did not happen.  2020 did not get off to a good start for us either.  New Year's Eve Amy spent in the hospital with an infection.  The highlight of January was our cruise to the West Indies with our good friends Mary Jane and Chuck Wood.  But that did not turn out like we expected.  On the first day, before the ship sailed, MJ took a tumble down some steps as we were touring Old San Juan.  We did not know how bad it was until after we sailed.  6 broken ribs.  The seas were rough and cancelled two islands that we had planned to visit.  Two days before the end of the cruise I thought I was getting a sinus infection.  When I got home I found out it was the flu.  Amy got it also.  After a week at home I felt so bad I went to the ER and ended up staying in the hospital for a week.  We spent the month of February recuperating at home.  After Amy was better she did go to see the grandkids and take them their Christmas presents.  That was the only highlight in February.  Backtracking for a moment, when we got home from the cruise there was a moldy musty smell in the house.  There had been about 6 inches of rain, while we were gone and the ceiling that had just been redone with the kitchen renovation was ruined.  After we were getting over the flu we decided to have a carpenter rip it down and try to find where the leaks were.  The upstairs bedroom floor was ruined also and has been partly removed.  I also had him tear out the wall next to the chimney to see if there was mold in the walls.  We had a roofer come to try to find the leaks, but have had no real rain to see if the leaks have been fixed since then.  We have a structural engineer scheduled to come to see if he can tell us how to solve the problem.  The only good is that we are redoing the upstairs bathrooms converting the bathtubs into showers. The down side to that is we are having to share the downstairs bathroom.
     Just as we had planned to go camping again, the coronavirus hits and travel is discouraged.  Church services are canceled, schools are closed and everything is shutting down.  We will have to get out to buy groceries when we run out of food, but till then we are doing what we normally do - taking it easy and staying put.