Rattlesnake Dance

Have you ever seen two rattlesnakes dance.

I did the other day.

Walking upright, three feet tall, their lower thirds intertwined.

Like synchronized dancers, they swayed in rhythm.

Each grotesque contortion of one echoed the other.

Suddenly, fangs bared, they attacked their partner.

Then collapsed in a coil on the grass, squirming, writhing, balled up.

I approached for a closer look.

Unraveling, they stood upright, almost on their tails.

"May I dance with you," I thought I heard one say to the other.

"Certainly, darling," I think she answered as I stumbled in retreat.

Was this a mating ritual? Were they lovers?

It went on for many minutes.

We caught it on video and watched it again later.

The film showed them in perfect harmony, each movement by one anticipated by the other as if choreographed for Broadway.

Owls

I have always liked owls.

However, other than knowing that they are wise, I never understood much about them.

Rarely seen in the day, I often heard them at night, but their flight is soundless and so rarely did I get a full blown look at them, unless they sat on a distant windmill tower.

Several months ago, we discovered a group of six owlets, in our abandoned barn, newly hatched, perching atop a rickety five foot high cabinet.

When we first opened the barn door and surprised them, the mother flew out an opening in the side of the building and the babies began an obnoxious hissing which lasted indefinitely with only brief pauses.

They clustered in a wad with the larger sitting on the smaller as if trying to hatch them all over again.

Skin and bone, no feathers, ugly, except for their eyes.

They hissed and stared, unblinking.

As if they were baring my inner soul.

Really.

We observed them as they grew older. They always resided atop their cabinet.

One day one of the larger ones became so annoyed with our staring at its staring that it fell off its perch.

We put on gloves, afraid of its well developed claws, and returned it to its home.

We became concerned that we were agitating them too much and so we waited over a month before visiting them again.

Even before we could open the barn door, not one but seven large, beautiful apparitions silently propelled themselves through the side opening and floated high in the sky.

That was the end of that.

Or so I thought.

One night, soon after, I heard loud thuds on my roof.

Concerned I gazed from an upstairs window and there were two of them, perched on my roof eating a midnight snack.

I spotted three more watching from nearby trees.

I glanced away and when I looked back one of the creatures was next to the window quietly staring at me.

We locked eyes for several minutes and then I very softly uttered, “Hello.”

Instantly it was gone, out into the wild black yonder.

Now the owl family lives around us. They suddenly launch from trees as we near them during the day.

They pound on the roof at night and I often see them framed against the moon.

They leave large dirty spit balls with the remains of their prey in the yard.

And also large blotches of white poop on the ground and roof.

Are they pests or is this a unique opportunity to observe the habits of a reclusive creature.

They do seem more than just another bird.

Maybe that is why no one in the family will let me shoot them.

Snow Fields

2005 is a year for the ages. Take a long look at the cotton fields.

Snow fields, many averaging over two pounds per acre.

The rains fell perfectly and often.

And a pest was conquered.

Boll worms are nasty creatures.

Larva is deposited by moths in tiny cotton bolls.

To the eye the bolls form perfectly.

The farmer is proud of his developing crop.

Over-confident he marches to his field and fondly squeezes the beautiful orbs soon to burst forth into bright fluffy fiber.

But, alas, the large green bulbs are soft to the touch.

He squeezes harder.

The bolls are mush, home to fat worms who have gorged themselves on the potential harvest.

The farmer trudges home anger in his heart.

There used to be but one option to combat this pest.

Spray insecticide and spray again and again.

Expensive, time consuming and unpleasant.

There is now a new option, used by many farmer this year.

Genetically engineered cotton.

It kills the worms on first bite, or maybe second.

Whatever.

The creature hates the cotton boll and leaves it to develop in all its glory, bringing a spring to the farmers step and money to his coffer.

Combine that development with the boll weevil eradication program and Roundup Ready cotton ( another genetically engineered type of cotton which allows the farmer to spray a powerful weed killer called Roundup over the plant without harming it) and you have the potential for a year like this one.

It will go down in history. Savor it.