If I had a nickel for every travelogue I’ve started since the
last….well, I’d have about 35₡, but you get the idea. As so often happens, I
start and stop, and then end up greeting you from an airport gate after the
fact. This time it’s A13 at DFW, awaiting a flight to La Guardia, NY to connect
with a twin engine to Mangus Holler, VA. Actually, the plane will land at
Roanoke Regional Airport and my cousins will ferry me on up to their house in
the Holler in their Ford Taurus station wagon.
So much has happened at the ranch this summer, the most
amusing of which I will begin with. I
had originally named this t-logue, “So Way Very Woo Woo on the Ranch,” because
that better encompasses the past two months, but I know “Loose with a Snake in
the Hen House” will draw the fair weather readers out of the woodwork like
“Blessing the Prostate” did. Is that
manipulative? Doesn’t matter. Why lie? I like for people to read my stuff after
I invest hours and soul in grooming it.
Before I get into the details of the story, there’s something
you’ve got to understand: I have SUFFERED from an abnormally severe fear of
snakes most of my life. It’s not that I hate snakes. I don’t have anything
against them personally; I’ve just been absolutely petrified of them since I
was a child. I’m talking night sweats, daymares and hallucinations about them. People
think I’m this tough mountain girl adventure traveler, but truth is, I’ve denied myself
many a pleasurable experience due to the mere possibility of a snake on a trail
making me turn back….
Anyway, my fear
is quite explainable given that where I come from, when you go to visit the neighbors, even before they ask how your momma’s been, they want to know, “Seen
any snakes?” And if you have, well, it’s a sure thing that they, or someone
they know, have killed one that was bigger-n-meaner. From diapers to death, every time you walk
out the door somebody’s warning you, “Now, you watch yourself for snakes, ya hear?!”
There might be three inches of snow on the ground, but when you go out to the
woodpile to get some logs—“Watch for snakes!” So, on top of the “normal”
ophidiophobia that most people suffer, I’ve been brainwashed into
believing…..believing what? I don’t know exactly, other than I should check
under my plane seat before sitting down because a black mamba might be lurking there,
escaped from the carry-on of an African traveler.
As a final bit of evidence to prove my point,
just last week when I was telling my oldest brother about clearing trails on
the ranch, did he respond with curiosity, enthusiasm or some sort of interest
beyond a stern warning? No. “Watch out
for snakes! They’ve got some mighty big rattlers down there in Texas I hear,”
was what he said.
The depths of my fear now well established for my reader, I
move on with the story: When the ranch manager, Chandler, went on vacation, I
took over the chicken duties, which I was thrilled about, because I like the
routine of their care: open up the hen house at dawn, periodically collect the
eggs during the day, feed and water in late afternoon and then close them up
for safekeeping at dusk. Silly as it sounds, it just fills my bucket to find a
white oval or two waiting on me in a nest. Well, about two days into my taking
over the guard, I ducked in for the noonday egg check, started to stick my hand
in one of the cubby holes and saw the hay move. That’s not normal.
It’s dark in
the hen house, perhaps for ambiance, but I’m not sure. The closest I’ve ever
come to laying an egg is ovulation, and I get grumpy, as do the hens, I gather,
having heard how they cackle and raise a ruckus when they are on the roost. I
imagine some soft lighting could be comforting to one working so hard to
produce, so maybe Chandler keeps it dim on purpose, but then again, it might
just be due to the building materials at hand at the time of construction.
Anyway! Of importance is that I couldn’t half see in the box, until my face was
inches from the entrance and my pupils adjusted enough to make out a scaly, tan
and dark brown pattern doubled up on itself amongst the straw.
I just about
shit my britches! Snake! It’s a snake! I knew this was eventually going to
happen. It’s not uncommon that a snake
gets in the henhouse. What’s never happened before is that I’ve had to deal
with it. Somebody else has always been around to handle the situation while I
wallflowered by the door. Here was my chance to face my fear and I wasn’t going
to wimp out.
That decided, while I’m standing there,
1.
trying
to shoo away the hens that are prancing around my feet waiting their turn at a
laying box like a bunch of college girls outside the portapotties at a beerfest
2.
trying to get my heart rate down to under 120
and my courage up to full throttle
3.
trying
to get a picture on my iphone, because this IS going on Facebook!
4.
trying
to figure out how/where exactly it is that I am to clamp down on the snake with
this fancy trashpickerupper snake stick I’ve seen them use...
a serpent head peeks out of the middle box, turns a quick left and starts into the adjacent box.
a serpent head peeks out of the middle box, turns a quick left and starts into the adjacent box.
Time’s up. It is
making a move, and so must I. Using the snake stick, I grab hold of what has
made it out of the first box, but not into the second, and pull. I swear, it
was like trying to slurp in that infinite spaghetti noodle that spans from your
tonsils to the bowl and ends up dangling down past your bellybutton. I know I
looked like a six-year-old landing her first fifteen pound catfish on a surf
rod. I had about the first 1/3 of the serpent stuffed into the trashcan, when
the other 2/3 finally flopped out of the box, and wouldn’t you know, wedged
down between the wall and the guinea cage on the floor. I pulled and pulled
until my hand gave out, the pressure on the stick eased and dang! before I
could bat an eye it was on the loose
and racing around the henhouse looking for a way out.
“Holy Fuck,” were the exact words that came out of my mouth.
The snake started up a wall, I clamped down on it again, this time with a death
grip, and yellow shit came spurting out of his mouth. “Oh, geezus, I’m hurting
it!” I thought and let go…and then realized those were egg yolks, not snake
guts. Too late. Hysterical hens flailing
about. Gigi prancing around like she’s barefoot on hot coals. Startled snake
slithering laps around the baseboard. It was an ice pageant of chaos in Hell.
I had it trapped though, you see, because a rat snake is
skinny enough to get in through the
holes in the chicken wire, but after it eats an egg or chick, it’s too fat to
get back out. We were stuck with each
other; a 5’ woman with a 5’ snake in a 10’x10’ chicken coop. I suppose I could
have opened the door and let us both run like hell, but I had set my sights on
facing a fear and I wasn’t chickening out.
Exhausted in sync, everybody paused to breathe and I grabbed
him again, 12 inches behind the head. I was craning him over to the can, when
the dangling four feet of tail slap-wrapped around a roosting pole. Dag-nab-it!
I pulled and pulled, but I didn’t have a chance in hell of out muscling this
rascal.
Now, math and measurements have never been my strong suit,
but I do have enough of a grasp on the subject to know that if I grabbed him
further down his body he would have less tail to wrap and I’d have a better
chance of getting all of him into the can. So, I let go, he relaxed, I grabbed
for the midsection and had him! …for the five seconds it took that snake to take
advantage the shortsightedness of my mathematical calculations. Five foot snake
÷2=2.5. A 3.5 snake stick-2.5=1. The first time that tongue-flickering head
came careening around to within an arm’s length of my face, I threw the whole
kittenkabootel—snake, stick and all. The
snake went up one wall and I went up the other.
“Holy Geezus me cago en la puta
madre quien me parió Fuck!” For the non-Spanish speakers, that’s the strongest cursing in my second
language vocabulary inserted in a statement of blasphemy and obscenity in my
first language that would have gotten my tongue amputated right out of my
mouth, if uttered when I was a child.
This time the snake was high enough off the ground that I
basically raked the middle of it into
the can, tucked in the two ends and slammed on the lid. Then I marched my
trembling ass over to the cabin stairs, sat down and cried. I needed to take in
what I had just accomplished. “Handling”
that snake is one of the scariest things I have ever done. The easier route
would have been to grab a hoe and chop its head off. That’s not the way at the
ranch and I’m glad. If at all possible, we catch and translocate, even the
copperheads and rattlers.
That degree of seemingly illogical respect for something so potentially harmful is woo woo, I know, but it resonates with me.
 |
| Look to my left and you'll see the copperhead |
That degree of seemingly illogical respect for something so potentially harmful is woo woo, I know, but it resonates with me.
The perfect conclusion for this anecdote just arrived via email from Chandler. It's from the book about animal signs called Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams.
“Scared
little Rabbit…
Please drop
your fright!
Running
doesn’t stop the pain
Or turn the
dark to light”
It would be a big fat lie to say I'm ready to crawl in a sleeping bag with a rattler, but I can tell you that my fright is greatly reduced from giving the snakes a chance to show me that they intend no harm. They strike at humans only when they feel threatened. Can't say as I don't do the same in those circumstances.
It would be a big fat lie to say I'm ready to crawl in a sleeping bag with a rattler, but I can tell you that my fright is greatly reduced from giving the snakes a chance to show me that they intend no harm. They strike at humans only when they feel threatened. Can't say as I don't do the same in those circumstances.
As for what I am “up to,” somehow or
another, my whole next year has fallen into place and looks like this:
Today –Aug 5
Virginia for family matters
Aug 5-7 Road
trip from Sacramento to Medford, Oregon with two Quest buddies
Aug 7-18
Vision Quest at Moondance Ranch in Oregon
Aug 18-24
Wake Up Festival, Estes Park, CO
Aug 24-26
visit with friend in Denver
Aug 26-Sep 2
visit with friend in Oakland
Sep 2-23
Calistoga, CA for training with LeapNow trip to Central America
Sep 24- Dec 5 Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras with LeapNow kids
Dec 5-Jan
9 down time-- Uruguay?
Jan 9-May 2 trips to Cuba with Road Scholar,
which brings
me to some of you saying you would like to go to Cuba with me. A bit of
news is that Grand Circle Foundation is no longer using U.S. reps, so I will be
exclusively working for Road Scholar, which for me means, lower pay, fewer
tips, but more guaranteed trips. Here’s the schedule they have given me, should
you want to think about joining a tour:
Program
#
|
Start
Date
|
End
Date
|
Group
Leader
|
#Pax
as of
July 10 |
20612 (SCU)
|
Friday, January 09, 2015
|
Saturday, January 24, 2015
|
Gigi
Austin
|
22
|
20612 (SCU)
|
Friday, January 30, 2015
|
Saturday, February 14, 2015
|
Gigi
Austin
|
7
|
20612 (SCU)
|
Friday, February 20, 2015
|
Saturday, March 07, 2015
|
Gigi
Austin
|
0
|
20612 (SCU)
|
Friday, March 13, 2015
|
Saturday, March 28, 2015
|
Gigi
Austin
|
8
|
0437 (HAV)
|
Monday, April 07, 2014
|
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
|
Gigi
Austin
|
0
|
20612 (SCU)
|
Friday, April 17, 2015
|
Saturday, May 02, 2015
|
Gigi
Austin
|
1
|
Go to http://www.roadscholar.org/programs/search_res.asp?CountryCode=Cuba for details.
OK! I’m ready to hit publish and get back to experiencing life instead of writing about it.
OK! I’m ready to hit publish and get back to experiencing life instead of writing about it.
Much love, G
