Our back deck has beeen screened in with a tight-fitting screen door. So how did the snake get in? We have no clue. From watching it off and on today, I’d say it also wondered how it got in because it appeared curious about how to get out.
When people asked me for a description, I told them it was round, several feet long, and had a head on one end which appeared to be the front end. As for markings, they look like the kind of markings one would get if he got drunk at a tatoo shop that caters to Hell’s Angels.
In the old days, guys would throw a stick of dynamite out the door the porch and rebuild the deck later. So far, I’m not in that much of a rush. In fact, we may not need to go out there for the rest of the year. After all, we have multiple ways to get in and out of the house primarily in case this kind of thing happens.
I grew up in Florida where there were snakes, sting rays, and moray eels lurking about whenever one went on a camping trip or hung the clothes on the line to dry. We didn’t use the clothes line for a year when Mother decided there were pirana fish in the mud puddle that developed out there during a huricane. It was easier to just take her word for it rather than reach into the puddle to see what happened.
I went on line to see what kinds of snakes look like copperheads. There’s a fair number of them including the copperhead itself. But then, maybe it’s just a black racer or a ratsnake. We live in a rural area where there are a hundred mice per square foot, so snakes probably think we’re running a smorgaboard.
As far as I know, Amazon sells mongooses, so if the who shebang with the snake drags on, perhaps I’ll send off for a box. They aren’t as noisy as dynamite.
–Malcolm
Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism books set in the Florida Panhandle.
If Chef Gordon Ramsay asked me as a contestant on “Hell’s Kitchen” or “MasterChef” to prepare my signature dish, I’d prepare a medium-well steak, with a baked potato wrapped in tin foil. If you watch either of these shows, you know (a) that Ramsay expects all steaks to be medium rare (i.e. raw), and (b) doesn’t believe in the concept of an entre with sides but one cohesive dish.
If you present an entre on “Chopped” with separate side dishes, the judges say, the flavors are here, but it’s not a cohesive dish.
Online exchanges tend to lend themselves to a high number of misunderstandings. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s because–other than private groups–10000000 people might be reading the exchange, something that adds a lot of pressure that isn’t there when two people talk over a cup of coffee in a Waffle House.
I seem to remember most things. But reality and my memory often diverge greatly when I think back to old TV shows that seemed like they were on for years that were, in fact, hardly on at all in spite of their great followings and influence. Two of my favorite shows were “The Honeymooners” and “Fawlty Towers.” I thought they were on forever, say, like “Grey’s Anatomy” or the “Johnny Carson Show.”
Looking at how I turned out, I’m sure that an entire generation of otherwise sane individuals was warped silly by its exposure to these shows. I’m pretty sure that “Twin Peaks” and “Lost” probably put more viewers into asylums, but Jackie Gleason and John Cleese probably had a lot of questions to answer about the impact of their shows on our sanity when they reachers the Pearly Gates.
Just wondering why I didn’t write Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. A comment from the character Miss Harty about Billy Sunday sets the tone for the novel: “There was great excitement. Mr. Sunday got up and declared at the top of his voice that Savannah was ‘the wickedest city in the world!’ Well, of course, we all thought that was perfectly marvelous.”
I guess I’ve led a sheltered life. I’ve been vaccinated against mostly everything and haven’t given it a second thought. Now with COVID, I’m learning there are people whose distrust of vaccines is (for them) like holy writ. I don’t understand that. But it does raise the question about whether or not forced vaccinations and vaccination cards are too much government. I see this as rather like the Brits mandating blackout curtains during the blitz: it makes us all safer as long as the cops don’t hassle us on the street asking to see “our papers.”
The ninth book in 
The Glacier Park employees’ reunion will take place this summer at Many Glacier Hotel. They happen from time to time but are too far away for me to attend. Everyone was worried about access to the east side of the park, but the Blackfeet Reservation has announced it will be open for travelers going to the park (unlike last summer). I will miss it more than I can say.
The male, short hair, black-and-white kitty who has adopted us after being dropped off on our country road by some nefarious person is slowly working his way into our hearts. Were refuse to name him until we have a chance to take him to the vet to be checked out. Right now, he is simply OC, for outside kitty. Our inside kitties are curious but aren’t above hissing at him when we open the front door.
I’m finally getting around to reading Kristin Hannah’s Firefly Lane. My nightstand is always overflowing and my wish list on Amazon is infinite. It’s a nice change of pace from John Hart’s The Unwilling. Being an old-fashioned sort of person, I’ve always preferred the term “firefly” to “lightning bug.” 
If you watch “Hell’s Kitchen” with Gordon Ramsay or “Chopped” hosted by Ted Allen, perhaps you’ve noticed that a fair number of the contestants on both shows present themselves as badass competitors who will wipe the floor with the scum they’re competing against.
My former publisher Vanilla Heart Publishing has closed due to health problems of the owner. 
Saint: Amanda Gorman, for using poetry to inspire us all.
Adding insult to injury is the fact the business brings heavy equipment into its compound via tractor-trailers that can’t make the turn onto our narrow road without dragging the trailer section through the right-of-way on three sides of the intersection. This creates a constant mudhole, one that certainly doesn’t help property values.
Malcolm's Round Table 