nerodia rhombifier
Friday, May 10, 2024 – 10:05 am
Bald Knob National Wildlife Refuge, Arkansas
I spotted the snake swimming along the muddy shore in one of the canals. As I watched, it crawled up onto the muddy bank like it was heading for the foliage, but then turned and crawled back into the water. It was probably close to three-feet long. I was perhaps 20 yards away from it, in my car on the road on the other side of the canal.
pantherophis obsoletus
Saturday, May 4, 2024 – 12:20 pm
Pope County, Arkansas – Galla Creek State Wildlife Management Area
After a morning of birding at Holla Bend, I headed toward home via Atkins Bottoms. I decided to make a quick stop at Galla Creek to see if any warblers were around.
The ratsnake was laying in the road not far off the paved highway. I pulled up next to it and took these photos, and it never moved. It was gone 20 minutes later when I left.
I don’t know why it has that weird kinked look — it’s almost like it swallowed another snake.
opheodrys aestivus
Monday, April 1, 2024 – 11:08 a.m.
Faulkner County, Arkansas – Kenny Vernon Nature Trail at Bell Slough Wildlife Management Area
Birding along the maintenance road near the marsh, with woods on one side and swamp on the other. I spotted the snake on the road and took some photos.
When I bent over for closer photos, it headed into the vegetation, crawling over some low plants and stopping with its head in the middle of a patch of grass. It seemed to be deliberately disguising itself in the blades.
Before long, it crawled over some other plants and disappeared. I made no attempt to stop it.
It was about a foot long and very thin.
Years ago, before I carried a cell phone or camera, I was hiking at Cadron Settlement Park when I spotted one that I remember as being a little larger than this one. It was curled on the path up the hill through the woods. I group of high-schoolers were headed my way, so I stood on the side of the path, one foot on either side of the snake so they wouldn’t mess with it. They walked by and glanced at me, but not one of them noticed the snake. After they passed, I went on my way and so, I assume, did the snake.
Nerodia erythrogaster
Tuesday, April 2, 2024 – 10:33 a.m.
Conway, Arkansas – Hendrix Creek Preserve
I was birding along the trail between I-40 and the creek. I saw an approaching couple with two boys. They stopped and stared at something along the trail, then continued toward me. I asked what they’d seen, and the woman walked back with me and showed me this snake.
It was coiled in the leaves right along the trail, perhaps three feet from the banks of the creek. I took a couple photos, but when I got too close, it headed through the brush into the water. I saw it floating mid-stream for a short time, then disappear under the surface.
It was perhaps 30 inches long, smooth gray on top and plain yellowish underneath.
“What caused you to stop talking?” says Casey.
“I ain’t got no more to say, I guess,” says the Kid.
When the Kid begun one of these speeches of his we all shut up and looked at him and each other until he was through, never knowing what was coming next. For example, he is always calling the engines the “motors,” which affords us all a general laugh, but for some reason we never lit on the Kid and straightened him out and explained on what points he was wrong, we just left him ramble on; it was better than having a Wurlitzer jukebox aboard.
from High Water, by Richard Bissell
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He was the type that calls his wife his “waaf” and an egg an “aig” and all that crap. To us Northern boys he sounded like he had been listening to too many hillbilly radio programs and was just putting it on. I still think Southern people could talk like normal human beings if they wanted to, but they think it is cute to talk like that. Arkansaw also had a clasp knife with a spring blade that he was supposed to of killed somebody with down in Helena. All I can say is, I’ve been to Helana quite a bit on the oil tows, and he could kill two or three dozen in that town and it couldn’t help but be an improvement.
from High Water, by Richard Bissell
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So I went down to my cabin pretty mad and climbed into the sack and read a lesson in my Correspondence Course on American history, but I didn’t find a thing in there to cheer me up — it was the same selection of bums we have today, only they wore funny clothes and had never heard of bubble gum.
from High Water, by Richard Bissell
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The name “Wyoming” which has such a fine western flavor to it was actually pulled out of a hat by James M. Ashley, an Ohio congressman, in 1865. It has its origin in the Delaware Indian word “M’cheuwomink” (meaning A-choo!). No Delaware Indian, however, has ever been west of Finksburg, Maryland.
from How Many Miles to Galena?, by Richard Bissell
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Memory Lane is likely to be all potholes and broken glass so my advice is to Watch Out.
from How Many Miles to Galena?, by Richard Bissell
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Well the fact is, a white anglo-saxon protestant can’t eat eggs ranchero in Gallup because they have a patent here on comestible liquid fire. You might just as well go to Carnegie Illinois Steel and ask them to fill your pannikin at Furnace Number 2.
Isabel told the waitress her dilemma and had pointed out to her a local mama and two kiddies lapping up bowl after bowl of the seething brew and hollering for the tabasco sauce to liven it up a little.
I don’t understand how the human body can take this kind of punishment but it’s all in a gradual conditioning process and I once knew a person who had read all the works of James Fenimore Cooper.
from How Many Miles to Galena?, by Richard Bissell
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[Carl] Hubbell’s screwball didn’t fade away. No, it broke hard to the left, an anti-curveball, and he threw it by turning his hand inside out upon releasing the ball. It was a painful pitch to throw, an arm wrecker. Jim Murray’s line about Hubbell’s deformed arm rings through the years: “He looks as if he put it on in the dark.”
from Why We Love Baseball, by Joe Posnanski
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Padres’ announcer Jerry Coleman was a wonderful and beloved baseball announcer famous for his malapropisms, particularly this one: “Dave Winfield goes back to the wall, he hits his head on the wall … and it rolls off! It’s rolling all the way back to second base! This is a terrible thing for the Padres!”
from Why We Love Baseball, by Joe Posnanski
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Roads leading South bear signs marked “This way to Texas.” Those who can read keep on going; the others settle in Arkansas. They’re the kind who think the Alamo is pie with ice-cream …
from Try and Stop Me, by Bennet Cerf
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Typhoid fever, like most infectious diseases, had a way of affecting chiefly the most ignorant, and I might say the most impecunious also, so that all the doctor got for his pains was the satisfaction of doing his duty and the knowledge that perhaps he had saved another moron to join the great group of unemployables.
When word came that a baby was in convulsions, I would drop everything else and hasten to attend. … If the convulsions did not cease the child was placed in a tepid water-filled washtub. … One of these children that I bathed for six hours one night is in a penitentiary. At least he is not listed as unemployed, and that is something.
from The Horse and Buggy Doctor, by Arthur E. Hertzler, M.D.
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Why fools are endowed with voices so much louder than sensible folks possess is a mystery. It is a fact emphasized throughout history.
from The Horse and Buggy Doctor, by Arthur E. Hertzler, M.D.
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Going to the rally tonight … to hear the candidates make speeches?
“Ah, that,” said Callahan and dismissed the idea. “There will be promises and words. But I’ll forget the words, and so will they, and we’ll just have another set of lads to pay and feed.” He looked sharply at Musick. “Why have not these men in office done what they said they’d do?”
“What’d they say they’d do?”
“How would I know? But why didn’t they do it all the same?”
“Well,” said Musick, “how do you know they haven’t done it?”
“Because they never do,” said Callahan.
from Long Storm, by Ernest Haycox
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Under the rules of the game [going to an analyst], nothing was your fault; all your sins had a cause — usually your mother — against which you’d been helpless. Not only were you cleansed and made innocent, you were made important. However you might bore your friends and family, to be in analysis meant that, like the first rock brought back from Mars, you were worth analyzing. Unique, complex, fascinating.
from Wasn’t the Grass Greener, by Barbara Holland
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Here is a restraint which nature and society have provided on the pursuit of striking adventure; so that a soul burning with a sense of what the universe is not, and ready to take all existence as fuel, is nevertheless held captive by the ordinary wirework of social forms and does nothing particular.
from Daniel Deronda, by George Elliot
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The neglect of the prophetic Scriptures, by those even who profess to believe all Scripture to be inspired, is proverbial. Putting the matter on the lowest ground, it might be urged that if a knowledge of the past be important, a knowledge of the future must be of far higher value still, in enlarging the mind and raising it above the littlenesses produced by a narrow and unenlightened contemplation of the present. If God has vouchsafed a revelation to men, the study of it is surely fitted to excite enthusiastic interest, and to command the exercise of every talent which can be brought to bear upon it.
from The Coming Prince, by Sir Robert Anderson
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The study of prophecy, rightly understood, has a range no narrower than this. Its chief value is not to bring us a knowledge of “things to come,” regarded as isolated events, important though this may be; but to enable us to link the future with the past as part of God’s great purpose and plan revealed in Holy Writ. …
Beneath the light it gives, the Scriptures are no longer a heterogeneous compilation of religious books, but one harmonious whole, from which no part could be omitted without destroying the completeness of the revelation. and yet the study is disparaged in the Churches as being of no practical importance. …
The Bible … is all of intrinsic value if indeed it be from God; and moreover, the statement which is assailed, and which may seem of no importance, may prove to be a link in the chain of truth on which we are depending for eternal life.
from The Coming Prince, by Sir Robert Anderson
