Posted on 09/22/2007 11:18:58 AM PDT by girlangler
Dogs are such wonderful creatures!
OMG, Serious heart attack time.
My sister-in-law here in Texas used to roll bowling balls over the snakes on her porch at her horse farm. I don’t think it worked. Her husband just had to shoot them.
This almost-my-dog was very funny, actually. We were at our trainers working on blinds with Shelley and marked retrieves with Ruby. (Shelley had a snit and refused to obey whistle commands -- ordinarily she is Miss Princess and does everything she's supposed to -- but after a session with Mr. Sparky she became a reformed character).
Anyhow, our trainer knows this weird guy, an old man who lives in Atlanta and buys retriever puppies then gets tired of them and gives them away. . . . thankfully he gives them to our trainer who can usually place them. Anyhow, he had a big old lanky chocolate Lab boy, 9 months old, named Bootsie, that this guy had given him. He was trying him out on marked retrieves to see what he could do, I was sitting in my folding camp chair about 12 feet behind the line. The bird boys threw a mark, Bootsie went boiling out, grabbed the bumper, and came running right back to Tim -- then ran right past him, did a perfect "sit" right next to my chair, and dropped the bumper in my lap. I handed it back to him, pointed, and said, "Go take it to Tim." So he did. Next bumper, he did the exact same thing . . . but when I handed it back, he put one paw on my leg, dropped his head in my lap, and rolled his eyes up at me. Tim says, "You want a free dog?"
My standard reply: "My husband will kill me." (husband at that moment was out in one of the blinds heaving bumpers.)
BTW, I think Ruby is coming into season (she's 13 months old). How do I tell? (when I asked my vet that question about my first Siamese cat, she laughed uproariously and said, "You'll know." I knew.)
Hah! Are you old enough to remember juvenile delinquents? The crimes that shocked society were like stealing hubcaps, writing bad checks, driving up and down their girlfriend’s street sounding a siren, and in our town boys gathering to smoke and play their car radios loud in the hospital zone was a biggie.
If a danged rattlesnake bit me I wouldn’t be worrying a lot about language.
I know, whoever wrote the story might oughta be worried about it.
But I aint.
I’ve run over snakes and they blithly slither away.
susie
Yeah, unfortunately, and I really like to see them down by now (9 weeks). They can come down later, but it gets less likely with every passing day. *sigh*
I think you should have kept Bootsie, it sounds like one of those old movies. And then ya’ll would win the national championship (or something like that). But, of course, the first thing you would do is change his name! ;)
You will know when she comes into season. Usually there is some swelling initially, but it’s easy to miss if you aren’t checking. However, there will be blood spots. Some keep themselves very clean, but you will still see some blood around the house. I hope you have tile and not all light colored carpet!
susie
Love your nickname....puts the Paladin song in my head!
susie
I do have a carpet shampooer and every so often I nuke it with spot remover and a good shampooing. But believe me, NOBODY will notice an occasional blood spot around here.
If Bootsie had been a smallish neat Chocolate with good color and a pretty head, I would have been tempted. But he's a homely, lanky, snipe-headed boy with the washed-out cafe-au-lait color - almost dead-grass Chessie color - that I just don't care for. And he's going to be HUGE. I suppose I should ask Tim what his pedigree is though.
No Diana, I have spent the day pulling up some groundcover the previous owner of my house planted all against my house.
I had someone to help today, and I used a mattox (sp) to dig it from the roots up. That stuff is beautiful, and when I transplant it somewhere where I WANT it to take over I’ll love it again. But right now I despise this plant. It is crawling up the side of my house (some kind of ivy) and holds moisture, mosquitos, spiders, snakes and a lot of frogs.
We have had a drought here all summer and spring. I really feel bad for the frogs, but I am sick of trying to pull weeds around this ground cover and have a cloud of mosquitos attack me. I spend so much time doing this I am covered with bites (despite wearing clothes that cover me and using repelant). I am reworking my property to make it more maintenance free, I just can’t keep up with all the weed pulling.
I was very worried about snakes today when I was reaching my arms into this. I am not fishing as much as I’d like to be, and that is why my yard is soon to be maintenance free.
Specially since I am the one that has to pull weeds around this and watch some mean looking spiders jump out at me!!!
Maybe that’s why I don’t see many snakes up here in the woods in Tennessee, where I live.
The moonshine stills probably poisoned them.
We hillbillies get it right every now and then. I knew if I waited long enough we could take credit for something (grin).
Hey buddy, If I had to live in close proximity (sp check for all you net editors out there) to those gators, I’d be happy to have them eat those cottonmouths. Between the two, I’d rather face a gator, he’ll get away from you. A cottonmouth is aggressive. My sister married a Louisiana cajun and moved out in gator country, and I used to worry about her. She’d let her nine year old boy go camping alone at a bayou and fish where those cottonmouths habitated.
I lived in Louisiana for several years.I actually went alligator hunting once for an article, back in my younger days, when I wanted to be a hotshot smalltime newspaper reporter.
When I was younger, I faced more predators than gators, the human kind. A young, naive, long legged hillbilly girl in Louisiana was bait for more than gators in those days, and I’m lucky to have survived.
I had an editor back then who kept promising me he was going to take me canoing down a particular bayou where the fishing was outstanding. I invited him to my sister’s house once, and on the way, he told me to pull over the car and he’d show me where we could launch the canoe. We walked out on a levy, or bank, and there were all these snakes with white mouths swimming around. It was creepy, I ran back to the car.
He didn’t get me in that canoe, or nowhere else, for the record.
Wandering Jew is supposed to keep snakes away, FWIW. WRT ground cover.
Glad to hear you had a successful day and weren’t victimized by a snake!
Husband worked on the lawn yesterday, built a big bonfire, got his “junque” out of the yard and tilled up a new bed for me that I’m going to fill with Daffodils and Tulips, all while I was at work yesterday.
The place looks like new. Well, as much as an old, rundown farmhouse can look “new,” LOL! :)
oooooo
Yeah, I know what you mean. And frankly, if a dog doesn’t appeal to you, he’s not one to take.
susie
..yeah...thems' words to live by...
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