I'm proud of my friend Nat. This is his office. I saw it with my own two.
1. I used to go visit my grandmother for a month during the summers. She lived near Helen, and never made me take a bath. She ranks near the top on the list of people I have ever known.
3. I hated it when my brother would try to land an Air Force plane on his Navy carriers. They weren't made for that. Come on, lets get real.
4. I wear glasses. It's become an often thing, which bums me out because I know I will lose them. I've lost every pair of sunglasses I have ever owned and I have lost my laptop power chord 3 times in the past moth. But at the same time they are good; its like the switch from analog to high defination. Amazing.
5. I stabbed Trace Gabriel with a stick when I was little. I remember the stick went through his hand. He may have deserved it at the time; the jury is still out (i.e. I never got in trouble, and the Statue of Limitations are in effect by now). I was probably defending one of my aircraft carriers.
6. From the ages of 10 to 14 (aka, the awkward years), I was a paid assasin in my neighborhood. $5 for a squirill and $7 for a chipmunk. My neighbors would let me hunt in their yards and some really did pay. I probably killed a thousand squirills within those years. At first, I would have a proper funeral for each one as I killed them; complete with a gravel cross on their grave. But gradually my conscience and ethics wore thin; I regressed from participating in the practice of mass graves to throwing their carcasses over my other neighbors fence (which in hindsight, is something my dad showed me how to do). This was the same neighbor that my Dad didnt get along with.
7. Mark Fritchman and some of his friends came to our house while he was in high school. We had a pool and my sister was the only one home; the rest of us were in Charleston, SC. While it was innocent and just a group of youth group kids coming over to swin, it was still my sister alone with boys. When my Dad found out, we had to come home. We drove through the night. Way to screw up our vacation, Mark. (not really, I think Chris Long had a thing for her back then).
8. I ran Trace Gabriel over with Mike B's "Taco" at Summer Camp one year. I didnt know how to drive a stick very well and I was on the big hill on the girls side of camp. I stopped to unload something in one of the girls cabins, and meanwhile a parent decided to park within a foot of the Taco. When I needed to leave, I noticed that I would hit the car behind me when I put in the clutch. Trace volunteered to stand between the two to prevent a collision. I overestimated Trace's stregnth and I underestimated the slope of the hill. Anyways, I ran Trace over with the Taco. Trace; what will I do to him next.
9. It is late, and I can hear Aaron Taulbee, my roomate, snoring through the wall. He doesnt snore though, for the record.
10. I'm sick of politics. No more, please.
Now it seems as if I am behind the times...any idea who I should tag? Lets think big too, I will tag anybody who has a blog.
Ok, so here is what I did. I started a really long blog and have avoided finishing because of the length. I have wanted to blog since, but I had that feeling that you get when you don’t have your homework done before class. You can't just go to class without your homework. So I just ignored it. But it is time to do the dang thing:
yes, I killed rattlesnakes. For one, it made me feel like I was in a john
So, in late June I started working on Sweetwater creek, in the southwest corner of
And this is what it looks like from the ground.
The fawns are taught to stay low in hopes that a predator won't see them, and then the mother runs away, attracting the predator from the baby. So then the wolf/coyote runs after the mom. Pretty cool example of sacrificial love.After getting wet, the rattles on the rattlesnakes are silenced. Also, they don't rattle when it is cold or windy. And they don't really move a lot when it is cold or windy. On this particular day, the wind was blowing about 50 mph. I was walking along the shorter grass, finding the weeds, and blazing a trail to them. I was on a stretch that did not have any weeds or grass for that matter, and I was walking fast, with my head down. As I went to take a step, all the sudden I see a rattlesnake coiled up right below my foot. Before I had time to react, it struck, biting the bottom of my boot.
Now that made me mad. I mean, give me a rattle or get out of my way. I decided to make an example out of this rogue serpent by killing it and displaying its skin on my 4 wheeler. So I began to try to hit it with my sprayer wand; the cowboy way. With each attempted strike I made, the snake matched me, coming closer and closer to my hand each time. I looked around to see if there was anything I could use as a weapon and I found a driftwood log; it was about 4 ft. in length and I couldn't wrap my hands all the way around it. It was also fragile, so I couldn't use it as a bat. So I decided I would make jabs at the snake. I began to jab, with my hands in the middle of the log for balance. Then, the snake pulled a rope-a-dope, dodged my strike and made a strike of its own. This happened so fast that my only reaction was to pull my hands, log attached, back towards my body as fast as possible.
Now, when you push the end of a log into your face as hard as you can, your body reacts in funny ways. First comes the blood. I hit myself just above the right eye, and all the sudden I saw red dripping into my eye and face. The second reaction I had was that blurry, fuzzy thing you get from head injuries. At first it was like glitter, then more like fog. During the fog part, my body was saying "Ok, time to lay down Matt. It will be ok, the ground is soft". But my head was saying "You are about to get eaten by a rattlesnake. It will be like one of those National Geographic movies where the snake eats the elephant. You know, their jaws expand when they eat and you are a skinny kid". I was able to will myself back to the real world, and I killed the snake as it was in retreat. I spent 30 minutes skinning it and preparing the rattles; I called myself Trace for the rest of the day. All my friends I worked with made fun of me, and they still do. I almost got taken down by a 4 ft. snake.
