Potential presidential pets

Chicago Tribune ^ | May 15, 2007 | Bill Hageman

[WFTR]

If Fred Thompson is having to film Law and Order in New York City in live in that area, he may not have space or time for a dog. I would see Fred as more the type to keep a big hound because a hound fits the rural Tennessee image. I think bird dogs and other pointers are popular in Tennessee as well. I would imagine Fred Thompson walking through the brush hunting quail with a favorite bird dog rather than hunting ducks with a lab. I’m not saying that I’m right. That’s just the picture that comes to my mind.

[Fairview]

You are probably right on both counts.

[Ditter]

Sorry to offend you Bill, I’ll explain. When our oldest child was 5 months old we moved to a wooded piece of property in the country on a creek. This land had never been cleared and little did I know it was snake central. The snake population consisted of copperheads, water moccasins and coral snakes, rarely did I see a non poisonous snake.

We raised 3 children there and only through my constant vigilance did they grow up with out being bitten and killed, but some of our dogs and cats were. I killed a snake a day when we first moved there and continued to find them in the sandbox and kids play area weekly for 16 years. I can’t calculate the number of snakes I have killed, and when you add to that huge rattlesnakes on our hunting lease in south Texas and property we owned in the Texas hill country, the number increases.

Finding that copperhead yesterday brought all of my own fear for my children (now grown) and my hatred of snakes back.

When I go to Petco to buy dog food I see people picking out their little white mice to take home for their snake to eat alive I just wonder if they stand there and watch. Tell me Bill, do you stand there and watch as your snake swallows the little thing alive? What kind of response do you have to that?