Milk snakes and king snakes are the same thing....we had a bat land on our
sail yesterday about 5 miles offshore....think he was probably tired of all
that darting too and fro after flies....he hung there for awhile until we
headed back in and then took off.....when I lived down in St Louis, we had
to check the backyard every morning for water mocs before we let the dog
out...he got one one day and mangled it...fortunately, he didn't;'t get
bitten but there was snake goo all over the place....we ended up cutting the
lawn so close that they wouldn't come up there any more....I can take or
leave snakes...they don't particularly bother me as long as they keep where
they're supposed to be....salamanders, though, gross me out....
"felton" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 23:21:56 GMT, "katysails"
wrote:

I have 6 grandkids and one on the way....I am 52 and make no bones about
it....we don't have armadillos in Michigan....we do have lots of
groundhogs,
though, and we do have snakes....milk snakes look just like coral snakes
and
are kind of fun to play with as long as you don't drop them into the hot
dishwater...(don't ask me how I know this....) Right now I have to keep
the
kids out of the woods, though, because the red fox have a litter and i
don't
want them to move away....most eerie animal voices of the night when they
yip and yell at the moon....

You and I are the same age, but I only have one kiddo and he just
turned 18. I am hoping not to be a grandpa for quite some time I
don't think we have too many milk snakes down here, but we do have
king snakes, which have that same color scheme. All things
considered, I have seen enough snakes to last me and I would be just
as happy not to stumble on to any in the future, although we did have
quite a remarkable outbreak of water moccasins two summers ago where I
sail. Yikes! One guy was uncovering his main and a big old
cottonmouth dropped out of his sail down through his open
companionway. For about three weeks those things were everywhere




"felton" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 23:10:59 GMT, "katysails"
wrote:

Yeah...the good old days....kids today are really boring.....no
initiative....I take my grandkids out and teach them bad things like
building forts out of junk from the barn and climbing trees and
sticking
the
hose down the groundhog hole.....Protective Servioces will probably
cart
me
away one day....

Grandkids? You can't be old enough for grandkids. Don't you have any
armadillos to chase? That used to be fun. Maybe it still would
be...I'll have to be on the lookout, although I was never really sure
what to do with them once I caught them. The pursuit was fun, in a
Lord of the Flies sort of way. We used to go snake hunting a lot..to
catch them. Now I have really gotten too old to remember what the
appeal was of catching snakes.





"felton" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 22:40:10 GMT, "katysails"
wrote:

My brother used to throw aerosol cans into our 55 gallon trash
burner
when
we were kids....split it down the sides and flattened it....was
quite
the
sight....and he didn't have to go to Purdue to accomplish it....

Growing up in a relatively small town in the middle of nowhere,
there
used to be a lot of things done to break the boredom that would now
be
on the national news. Amateur bomb making, death defying pranks and
the like. Times have changed, though.

Come to think of it, it wasn't all that uncommon to see folks with
missing fingers when I was growing up... One of the side effects
of
that "go outside and play" theory of child raising.



"felton" wrote in message
news On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 19:23:48 GMT, "Scout"

wrote:

While searching for a charcoal starter-chimney, I stumbled upon
this
unique
method of getting the grill ready in a hurry.
Don't miss the picture.
Scout
http://home.att.net/~purduejacksonville/grill.html

Yowee. Looks exciting...to watch from afar

Reminds me a little of the old joke. A new skydiver was making
his
first jump. He pulls the first ripcord...nothing happens. He
tries
the reserve chute...nothing happens.

As he is falling towards Earth, he sees someone else on the way
up.
As they pass, he asks, "excuse me, you do you know anything about
parachutes?" The other guy replies, "sorry, no, do you know
anything
about propane stoves?"

Hey, I said it was an old joke.