Shared Stories

Shared Stories

Everyone, but everyone, unless they were reared and lived their lifetime in Antarctica have had some kind of experience with reptiles. Please do comment and post them here under Shared Stories. Any identification questions or of reptile inquiries in general you need answered, post them here and I will get back at ya as soon as the possibility arrives. I'm going to start the session off with my own little introductory story to snakes, so here goes...
 
First Encounter
I'll start off where it all began. Somewhere between the ages of four and five, I used to visit a field situated between my street and an old train yard feed mill. This was back in Fort Worth, Texas during the days where the American West truly began on a social and cultural level. In fact, still today Fort Worth is known as, 'Where the West begins.'

Sandwiched between the street and feed mill the field was thoroughly dispersed in waving stands of tall grass that bowed to the prevailing wind. The southeastern third of it was wooded containing scrub oak with a few tall sycamores interspersed. The field had a dirt road that coursed directly through it bisecting the grass half from the woods. It was there at this junction, although unbeknownst to me at that very young time in life that I had my first glance at what snakes were.  

One day as I was walking down the dirt road with my younger brother, Mike, when by the edge of  the woods I saw something move and go under a rotting log. As best I could, I rolled the log over and if memory still serves, found four to six little legless wonders crawling about. The actual amount doesn't really matter, for they were a handful in my toddler palm. Thinking that they were worms, I did grab a handful of 'em and proceeded to take them back home leaving Mike in the dirt road's dust. 

Upon worried anticipation after hearing my arriving excited shouts concerning my captured squiggling trophies, mom met me at the door with shouts of her own. For ya see, as far as mom was concerned, I had already developed a tendency to getting into things I shouldn't be messing with. Anyway, she immediately with great effort on her part attempted to make me depart with my possession. But I wasn't about to be pried from my newly found prize.

Getting reinforcement to help relieve her demise, mom brought over our next door neighbor who happened to be a policeman. He immediately identified them as baby copperheads and demanded I drop them immediately where he could commence to stomping on them. 

There just was no way I was going to have any of that for I had become attached to these little marvels. Just because this man sometimes wore a shiny badge wasn't going to nudge any of my stubbornness. Besides, I didn't have an inkling of an idea as to what a snake was much less copperheads, so hadn't the slightest urgency in wanting to recognize the adults' dread of a dangerous situation at hand. 

I did manage to calm mom down a tad bit by putting them all in a big pickle jar. After that, as long as the jar was tightly sealed with ice pick holes for breathing, she and dad, who later came home from work, let me keep them. For some reason, I felt sad for the little guys as stuck in that stinky sour pickle jar. Even the grass I put in their didn't seem to make them happy, as their faces were stolid; fixed in one constant stare. So, I let them go by taking them back where I found them.

These new animals fascinated me then as they do now. For a little boy, it was a marvel to me how something could get around so efficiently without legs and how they carried on in all that tongue flickering. From then on, I had to know more about these creatures that grown-ups called snakes and seemed a bit fearful of.

In recollecting, it seems that the dominant color was gray, so today, I question the cop's determination that they were copperheads, but rather were some harmless species of thamnophis or coluber. No matter what they were, I was never bitten by any of them fortunately, even though I sneakingly ( didn't want to rile mom up again) would handle them quite often.

I now know why snakes flicker their tongue to smell and why they have that constant stare due to no eyelids, instead covered by a rigid scale.  

This was my introduction to snakes with many more experiences to come that were and are based on this one episode of first impressions from a little boy's perspective into a grown man's actions.     

The Garter Snake