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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (59157)	2/28/2001 2:07:56 AM
From: Mac Con Ulaidh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Come now, country boy, of course they are cotten mouths down by the river. And diamond backs. And water mocassins. Poinsonous snakes are a dime a dozen around here. But you don't die from most of them. I'll never forget the day I was driving down the holler and came up on one of the boys walking down the road with a rattler in each hand. Caught 'em barehanded and took 'em home to cage up till he sold 'em for meat. Strange lad, but useful. And there was the old man, Coy, who got rattlesnake bit while picking out rocks from his rock pile without gloves. He drove himself to the hospital, 40 minutes away. Later he just said it was damn stupid of him to do that in summer without leather gloves on. Duh. It's all in the timing. But ticks really are icky, aren't they? Hate those things, and they seem to love me. My papa ate a teaspoon of something (I forget, it's something you normally put on the garden to make it grow), every day and swore it kept them away. Just can't bring myself to eat it. I keep my hair very short in the summer to make the search for them easier and shower before sleep. And I still get a couple of dozen every year. But my dad never gets a one, and he is out even more than me that time of year. So you might get lucky.

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (59157)	2/28/2001 8:24:45 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 71178

Ticks. When we moved to Virginia, we had never heard of ticks. Have I told this before? -- I feel like the old lady in a rocker-- ("you jest set right there at my feet, sonny, and shet up whilse I tell you this") My brother and I went out exploring the fields near our new home, and when we took our baths that night, my brother, age 9, said, "There;s a bug on me and he won;t come off." We all gathered around and sure enough, there on his leg was a little flat brown bug, seemingly permanently attached to his leg. We stared at it for a bit, and then my mother, who was menopausal and not in her right mind at good times, and moving was definitely not a good time, began to scream, "OHMYGOD, GORDON, IT"S A TICK!!!! OHMYGOD! THEY CARRY ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPOTTED FEVER!!! OHMYGOD! CALL THE DOCTOR!" Well, Skip (my brother) was a tad upset at learning he was being infected with a deadly disease even as we watched, and he began to cry. My father, in typical manly fashion, began to take charge. He poured iodine on it and alcohol on it and the tick was impervious to it all. My mother finally got out the phone book, which was maybe ten pages back then- and found the name of a doctor- and called his house. I guess you could do that in those days. He told her not to pull it off, becuase its pincers would remain, and this was a bad thing, but to hold a match close to it and burn it so it would release its hold and drop off. I realize this is anticlimactic but I can't help it- I was only ten, and my attention must have wandered. I don't remember what happened after that. I guess the match worked. My brother is alive and well today, some forty years later. My parents are both dead. But I don't think that had anything to do with ticks. Years later, the boys, about 2 and 4 years at the time, and I were visiting some friends on the Outer Banks and we were sitting in a nice restaurant, and one of the other houseguests, a man with the wonderful first name of Fairfield, said, "Oh, look, a tick!" and sure enough, there on his arm was a little tick, and he took a match and held it close and the tick fell off, and then he put it in an ashtray and burned it up. The boys still remember Fairfield, the tick man, clearly. And ticks cast no traumatic penumbra for them.