Snakey Places

Lately I have been reminded of earlier and simplier times back to my childhood. Is this a part of the aging process?? Every day I live I am older than I have ever been before, and it is a frontier area of sorts to me as I don't exactly know if what I am experiencing is normal. Somehow I was reminded of in my youth we would often be out of doors and wandering through nature as kids back then did. Where we grew up in rural central Kentucky was often wooded and overgrown with fast growing shrubs and bushes. Being the country boys that we were, we acquired a lot of knowledge about natures with its wonder and beauty. Along with this beauty were areas of pitfalls and danger if we did not pay attention. We knew that the lawns were covered in white clover that attracted honey bees by the thousands , a fact important if you were barefooted as we normally were. To get stung by the bees was very often a minor part of every day life. I.E, the cost of doing business. Now Red wasps , yellow jackets , and monster hornets were a different matter. These were the bad boys that we knew could put us out of commission for a day. Yellow jackets often lived in nests under ground and had hair triggers when anyone came near. These foul little critters usually paid the price when we were attacked. It only took about a quart of lawn mower gas poured down the tunnel and a big old kitchen match put the icing on the cake. One monster WHOOSH later and often singed body hair brought great satisfaction to stung limbs. We couldn't resist throwing rocks at huge paper hornet nests. Once rattled the hornets woud come out in a black mass looking to have some youthful intruders ass. all too often it was mine . Holy hell those critters packed a punch. I can honestly say that nothing incites fearful memories in me more than having a sleek , black hornit tangled in your hair trying to burrow through to your scalp to sink his industrial stinging probe nearly to your brain. Or the memory of a swarm of monster bumble bees as the descend upon you sounding like a clumsy B-52 , angry at you for banging on the side of an old house where you knew their nest was located. Bumble bees are nature's way of preparing little boys for adult life.As we wandered along between stings , we would come upou areas that we called "snakey". These places would have a better than average probability of having a short tempered serpent as its main resident. Snakey could be a thick blackberry patch, a wooded area overgrown with weeds or a trash laced ditch. We instinctively knew what to avoid and what to expect. Rattle those bushes and a shiny blue racer black snake might roll out on you, ready to do battle. Or it might be a rat snake 6 feet long, more than ample to send us racing home. On a really bad day you might open up door number three and hear an answering rattle from within. Oh Hell! Sorry mr rattler that was a mistake. Walk through the woods and smell cucumber, then turn around. You didn't want to open that door. We usually won the battle of the serpents, but I realize today that every day I encounter areas in business that are just as snaky as in the old days. The only difference is that todays snakes wear pin striped suits and smell like Cool Water instead of cucumber. Like the hornets, these bad boys pack a powerful sting as well. These bombers don't fly with wings but with shiny, black BMWs and 500 SELs. Some sting worse than others, and some have lost their sting. I just know that they live in snakey places and that there seems to be a limitless supply of these old reptiles.Shake the bushes and you never know what comes out. Ask Cleopatra .