Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

October 9, 2006

Today’s announcements

Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian subscribers!

Happy Columbus Day for all our American subscribers

And now drum roll pleeeeeeeeeeeeese!!!!!!!!!!!!

Storytime Tapestry has concurred the 2,000 membership mark.  We actually have 2,009 members to date and growing.

NO CANCER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My prayers have been answered! My son's scan on Friday has shown. NO CANCER in his one remaining kidney!  The transplant kidney doing well, but he will have to have the remaining one removed at some stage.  For now we are counting our blessings and taking one day at a time. The biggest scare  was that they suspected cancer and now Steve can breathe freely again.  It has been a worrying time for us all. Thank you Lord for hearing our prayers. Violet  Apted 

violetsrblue7@hotmail.com

Now onto the good stuff!

Today’s Queue Stories

~**~**~

Chopper

Michael T. Smith

            The old pick-up truck, packed with kids, rattled past our house. From the cab,

Gussy, one of my school friends, waved to me. A few moments later, I heard the clicking

of claws striking pavement. I looked up and saw a huge brown-and-black dog run by. His ears flopped up-and-down, and his thick, pink tongue trailed from the side of his mouth.

“That’s Chopper, Gussy’s dog,” I thought to myself.

            Chopper flew by me, eyes focused on the retreating truck. The truck rounded the

corner and disappeared from view, with Chopper in hot pursuit. An hour or so later,

Chopper returned, plodding home. He’d lost the race, but the game wasn’t over.

            We lived in a small fishing village. The only road wound around the harbor.

In half a mile, it made four 90-degree turns. Not many people walked those turns,

instead, well-worn paths, which meandered close to the shoreline, shortened their walk. 

            Chopper learned those paths.

            Once again, I watched the truck make the first turn and disappear from view.

Chopper, running madly, appeared soon after. With his tail stuck out behind him,

ears slapping the side of his head, and that dangling tongue dripping drool, Chopper

passed our house. Instead of following the road, Chopper cut to the right and disappeared

into the tall grass.

            He reappeared around the bend, just as the truck got there. The truck gained

ground, took the second turn, and once again fell from view. Chopper, not to be outdone,

took another shortcut, and caught up. At that point, they both disappeared over a hill.

            Eventually, the truck pulled away for good. It would be a long time before

Chopper returned. The chase had been long and hard. I patted his head as he passed.

“Good boy, Chopper. You did well.” He turned his big brown eyes to me, licked my

hand, and continued his journey home. The next day would bring another chase.

            Years later, an older Chopper chased a newer truck. He couldn’t keep up, but he

didn’t admit defeat. The truck would be around the second turn before Chopper came into

view and took the shortcut. By the time he burst out of the grass, the truck would be

around the second turn and gone. Chopper continued on for a while, knowing the way, but soon returned home.

            One day, the truck went by, but Chopper didn’t. He’d passed away in his

sleep the night before.

            In life, Chopper had a goal. He went straight for it. He didn’t waste time

meandering. If he had to jump off the main road, he did. The road everyone else takes is not always the best. Chopper always knew the best way.

Michael T. Smith

mtsmith@qwestonline.com

To read my stories or to sign up
to receive my weekly story, go to:
http://archives.zinester.com/86758/

~**~**~

The Cottonmouth and Me.

Mike Firesmith

The last time I killed a snake I was in High School. I wouldn't have killed it had it not tried to kill me. But a little background first.

 I've been catching snakes longer than I've been able to ride a bike. I can see them when other people cannot. Take me to a new location, one I've never been before, and I can show you were a snake is hiding. I think very much like they do. I know why they do the things they do. Very seldom in my life has a snake surprised me.

Remember the guy who spent thirteen years walking about with Grizzlies? The man was good at what he did and he was only wrong one time. He wrote about how bears are fairly mellow critters who really didn't want to or even so much as like attacking humans, much less eating them. Wouldn't you know it? He ran into a very large bear who hadn't read the book.

Back in 1979 a snake did surprise me. It tried to kill me. I have never had a snake try to kill me before, at least one I wasn't trying to catch, but that doesn't count. You know what I'd love to see? I'd love to see hospital take in people who were bit by snakes and have a sort of triage for them. If you were hiking and stepped on a snake and it bit you, a product of terrible luck, then you'd get treated immediately.

If you were trying to catch a snake and got bit then you'd have to wait fifteen minutes while someone explained to you that you're a moron. If you were trying to kill the snake and got zapped for your trouble you'd have to write one hundred times, " Snakes are highly beneficial creatures and I have no business trying to kill them." before they would even look at you.

This, among other more obvious reasons, is why the Surgeon General doesn't call me for advice very often.

But I wasn't trying to catch the snake. It was a cottonmouth, yes, and it was a good twenty-five feet from when I first saw it. I was walking along the edge of a pond with a shotgun, supposedly hunting doves. I've never been much of a hunter. I don't like shooting animals. I much rather watch them. Growing up in the South you have to learn to kill animals and fish and I just rather not. I can be an apex predator in any supermarket just as well as I can in the wild. I'm a wild animal in a steak house, and yes, I know that some animal somewhere has to be killed for this, but I don't have to pull the trigger.

The snake was a cottonmouth and it was fairly large. Fairly large in the name of Cottonmouths is anything over three feet long. These animals can be as thick as a football player's forearm. Five feet long is not unheard of but it is rare. I've seen only one that was anywhere near six feet long, and that's a questionable estimate because I was so close to it. A friend of mine was camping in the woods in Montana and he went with a couple of dozen drunks and potheads. They took rifles just in case a bear was spotted they could kill it, skin it, and eat it over the camp fire. They were about three quarters lit when JT said a guy across the fire from him began to choke. He turned around and looked and there was a Grizzly bear walking out of the woods, heading straight for the campfire. Everyone froze. The bear walked up to the middle of the camp. It then stood up, looked around a bit, then got back down and slowly walked away. JT said he could hear his heartbeat about three times before all hell broke loose.

Drunks were throwing tents, coolers, sleeping bags, women, rifles, pine trees, everything in the back of trucks. In the space of about a minute all the vehicles were heading out of the woods at warp speed. They high tailed it to the nearest town where they babbled their story to a park ranger. "Don't want bear eating ya? Then stay your ass out of the goddam woods."

I asked JT how big the bear was. " Eighty feet tall, when he stood up."

"Eighty feet? There are no bears that large, and you know it."

" Get close enough." was his explanation.

Mine too.

But the snake I killed was three feet long, maybe four. It wasn't a monster, and that's what puzzles me. Why would a undersized snake take such a chance at killing something that much larger than he? The knee jerk answer I get, and have given, is that Cottonmouths are territorial. But it has only happened once. As many of them as they are, and there are quite a few, it would make sense that more people would be attacked. But very few people get snake bit at all, and most of them are morons trying to catch the snake, or kill it. I'm not the only person whose ever been attacked by a cottonmouth. There is a gracious plenty anecdotal evidence indicating that there are times these snake will go on the offensive. The question is "Why?" In places where cottonmouths and people mix, and there are many such places, very rarely is there any conflict, except when the humans start it. So why at all?

Of all the snakes I have ever caught Cottonmouths are the most apt to bite. Worse yet, when they do bite, they tend not to rapid release like a rattlesnake, or for that matter, a non-venomous snake, but they sink their fangs in and hold on.

Because they eat frogs, fish, and other prey that might swim away, this makes perfect sense. Try marveling at this fact while one is trying to kill you. Doesn't work very well.

Snake: Zero. Shotgun: One. When I got over the fact that a snake had charged me, and was trying to kill me, I just lowered the muzzle and fired once. A shotgun makes a mess up close, even with large things, but at this range a snake, almost any snake, is going to be hamburger. I felt bad, but I'm not going to try to outrun a cottonmouth near the edge of a pond. I could, of course, out run the snake, but what if I slipped in the mud?

I have killed snakes since then, but it has always been mercy killings. Snakes writing in pain after being run over by cars, or beaten bloody by idiots, or torn apart by dogs, I have, and I will put them out of their misery.

Take Care,

Mike

~**~**~

 ValueSpeak

A Weekly Column

By Joseph Walker

valuespeak@msn.com 

NO JERK POLICY

All in all, it was shaping up to be a bad day as we traveled home after the family reunion.

For one thing, the sleeping accommodations at the hotel hadn’t been all that pleasant. For another, we stopped for gas and paid $3.67 per gallon. $3.67! I didn’t pay that much for my first car (OK, so it was a beat-up old Buick that my father gave to me on the condition that I pay for the repairs myself – I think you get my point).

And for a third, as we were driving we came upon a horrifying accident that had traffic at a standstill for 10 or 12 miles. Even though the accident was southbound and we were northbound, it sort of had me wondering if it was an omen of highway uckiness to come – for us.

Then we pulled into our favorite restaurant for breakfast. If ever there was a way to lift our spirits, it was a waffle or some French toast or an omelet at this place. There was even a parking spot right up front despite a crowded parking lot. I thought things were looking up until I paused by the sidewalk to let Anita and the kids jump out of the car before I parked it. While they were sliding out the door a gentleman in a sporty little car came bounding into the parking lot and took the parking space I was signaling my intent to enter.

"Oh man," I thought, fatalistically. "Here we go. Bad stuff. Bad day."

And I braced myself for what surely was to come.

Not being the confrontational sort, I sighed, shifted my car into reverse and prepared to back up and go in search of another parking spot. But as I glanced toward the sporty little car that had taken my spot, I noticed the man and the woman in there talking. She was pointing at me, and he was looking in my direction. Then I saw his reverse lights come on as he backed out of the spot he had "stolen" from me. He rolled down his window as he approached me.

"I am so sorry," he said. "I didn’t notice that you were signaling to move into that spot."

Well, this was something I wasn’t expecting. And I wasn’t exactly sure how to react.

"Hey, it’s survival of the fastest out here," I said. "It’s yours if you want it."

"Nah," he said. "I hate it when people steal my spot. I couldn’t do that to someone else."

"And I wouldn’t let him," his wife said, forcefully, from the passenger’s seat.

They smiled and waved and drove back into the parking lot, leaving the space up front for me. I walked into the restaurant feeling uplifted and revitalized, with a new positive outlook toward what was surely going to be a good day. Orange juice never tasted sweeter, nor was there ever a finer, fluffier omelet than the one I enjoyed that morning. Even the English muffin I ordered came to me slightly burned around the edges – just how I like it!

As we prepared to go I noticed the couple from the sporty little car finishing breakfast. I stopped to thank them again for their act of kindness, but they shrugged it off as no big deal.

"Life is too short," he said, "to waste any time or energy on being a jerk."

I know – I was stunned by his unique philosophy, too. We live in a time when people seem to be more concerned with protecting what they perceive to be their rights than they are in doing what is actually right, and we don’t mind being a jerk about it if that’s what it takes. I’m as guilty of it as anyone (an awkward encounter with a crotchety older woman at a recent ball game comes to mind). But I was so inspired by this couple’s "no jerk" policy that I found myself trying to live by it for the rest of the trip home – as a motorist, as a customer and as a husband and father – and you know what? It turned out to be a pretty darn good day for all of us.

So I commend the philosophy to you. Honestly, it isn’t as hard as it sounds. When it comes right down to it, it’s really pretty simple: don’t be a jerk.

And have a good day.

~**~**~

Poetry Section

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Readers Feedback

Ref The Big Fall.            Thank you Clara!    Beautiful story!                 Louise

Ref: The Bill Fall – Clara Westerfer - very nice and inspirational thanks, Rajshri Mishra

Senior Writers

Chief writer: Sharon Bryant

Chief researcher/historian: Hartson Dowd

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