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I got to see a snake in the road while I was out walking, today.
I wasn't the one who found it, but on hearing it was there, I of course had to go see. It was a copperhead, we're pretty sure. It turns out the things default to a "freeze" response when aggravated, which made convincing it to get out of the road without getting too close really hard.
In the end, the solution involved hooking it with the end of a very long stick and toting it to the forest's edge until it finally decided it wanted to slither into the grass all on its own. Nearly all my neighbors are the sorts who will run over over snakes in general with their cars or behead them with shovels on sight. And as much as I get that it doesn't mean anything, in the end, I'm glad we were able to scoot that particular snake out of harms way.
It's funny to compare the traditional vision of the serpentine character - something scheming and cruel, with the reality, which is of a rather dim witted legless creature that would only ever bite a human when very literally stepped upon. To hate a tiger for its stripes, or a serpent for its scales, is a purely human imposition of us onto them. Stepping back, it's always struck me as a mean thing to do to snakes in particular, who have brains smaller than your average bean and are likely genuinely incapable of any emotion so complex as malice.
I finished another story in my classic mystery collection - The learned adventure of the Dragon's head, a short little mystery centering around an old book and the odd intensity with which one man seems to covet it. Having been knee deep lately in literature that goes out of its way to emphasize the dialectical styles and mannerisms of the blue-collar and low-class American (both the Maltese Falcon and From Here to Eternity), the shift to painfully upper-crust Englishmen was kind of jarring. The protagonist, one mister Lord Peter, has some guys break into his home, and the first thing he does after tying them up is send his cousin to fetch them both some whiskey and soda for their trouble!
After the raw cynicism that colored the other two works, a gentlemen so gentlemanly he goes out of his way to make sure his assailants have something nice to drink before they leave was kind of refreshing.
I know I've been talking a lot about literature, lately, and I admit its mostly just what's been on my mind.
I have been picking away at a new version of my Danny Phantom home page on my website. Really, I should re-write the whole things, but ended up just going ham on tweaking the colors to get get the fade effects I'm planning for it just right.
It probably says a lot about me that I can, and do, spend all all day playing with CSS gradients and color sliders, but eh, I had fun. It's basically ready to post, but I'm holding off until tomorrow, where I can use a full night's sleep to give it one last look-see before putting it up live.
I wasn't the one who found it, but on hearing it was there, I of course had to go see. It was a copperhead, we're pretty sure. It turns out the things default to a "freeze" response when aggravated, which made convincing it to get out of the road without getting too close really hard.
In the end, the solution involved hooking it with the end of a very long stick and toting it to the forest's edge until it finally decided it wanted to slither into the grass all on its own. Nearly all my neighbors are the sorts who will run over over snakes in general with their cars or behead them with shovels on sight. And as much as I get that it doesn't mean anything, in the end, I'm glad we were able to scoot that particular snake out of harms way.
It's funny to compare the traditional vision of the serpentine character - something scheming and cruel, with the reality, which is of a rather dim witted legless creature that would only ever bite a human when very literally stepped upon. To hate a tiger for its stripes, or a serpent for its scales, is a purely human imposition of us onto them. Stepping back, it's always struck me as a mean thing to do to snakes in particular, who have brains smaller than your average bean and are likely genuinely incapable of any emotion so complex as malice.
I finished another story in my classic mystery collection - The learned adventure of the Dragon's head, a short little mystery centering around an old book and the odd intensity with which one man seems to covet it. Having been knee deep lately in literature that goes out of its way to emphasize the dialectical styles and mannerisms of the blue-collar and low-class American (both the Maltese Falcon and From Here to Eternity), the shift to painfully upper-crust Englishmen was kind of jarring. The protagonist, one mister Lord Peter, has some guys break into his home, and the first thing he does after tying them up is send his cousin to fetch them both some whiskey and soda for their trouble!
After the raw cynicism that colored the other two works, a gentlemen so gentlemanly he goes out of his way to make sure his assailants have something nice to drink before they leave was kind of refreshing.
I know I've been talking a lot about literature, lately, and I admit its mostly just what's been on my mind.
I have been picking away at a new version of my Danny Phantom home page on my website. Really, I should re-write the whole things, but ended up just going ham on tweaking the colors to get get the fade effects I'm planning for it just right.
It probably says a lot about me that I can, and do, spend all all day playing with CSS gradients and color sliders, but eh, I had fun. It's basically ready to post, but I'm holding off until tomorrow, where I can use a full night's sleep to give it one last look-see before putting it up live.
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